


Worth the Weight

by fresh



Series: One Big Happy [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Upside Down, Didn't Know They Were Dating, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Intersex, M/M, Mpreg, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:06:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 119,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23751283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresh/pseuds/fresh
Summary: “God, shut up for a minute,” Steve scoffed, throwing his hands up next to his head and shaking them to emphasize his point. “I want a baby, asshole.”As sudden as slicing a marionette’s strings, Billy’s brazenly overconfident swagger vanished; in his shock, he almost dropped his half-finished cigarette.Steve prayed for the earth to open up and swallow him whole.Currently on Hiatus; Will Resume in Early 2021
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Series: One Big Happy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2043892
Comments: 201
Kudos: 445





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Thanks Phyllis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20706872) by [Corvin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvin/pseuds/Corvin). 



> At the end of September, shortly after losing something very dear to me, I stumbled upon “Thanks Phyllis”.
> 
> Needless to say, I absolutely loved it, but the cliffhanger left me craving _more_ —so, taking matters into my own hands, I started writing a not-so-little something of my own. Seven months, one dead hard drive, and the onset of a worldwide pandemic later, and, well, here it is.
> 
> In the immortal words of the late, great Carrie Fisher, “Take your broken heart, make it into art.” Wherever she is in the galaxy, I hope that I’ve made her proud.

_June 1, 1995_

Exactly ten years after graduating high school, Steve decided that he wanted a baby.

It all began on the precipice of summer, only just, and those few weeks shy of the solstice were among the most beautiful to be in northeastern Indiana. Temperatures would start to swell in July, and the humidity would be unbearable by August, but under that big, bright sun, with faint whiffs of Coppertone on skin and sugary Firecracker ice pops dripping onto the sizzling pavement, June was lush and idyllic. Honeyed, even.

Yet with those dog days looming, the name of the game was quickly capitalizing on the northern hemisphere’s annual return to life. Graduation celebrations, pool parties, and outdoor barbecues were frequent, but none so much as the sudden influx of wedding ceremonies; something about blue skies and bountiful flora went hand-in-hand with grandiose declarations of love, as ridiculous as that sounded. Case in point, last December, Steve couldn’t help but laugh when a recently engaged Dustin announced that his very own nuptials would be taking place in June, of all months.

“Shut up,” Dustin had scowled, folding his arms like a petulant child, but he’d been perpetually in too good of a mood to stay annoyed for long. Hopper and Joyce had thrown a little secular shindig at their place two days before Christmas, and Steve and Dustin had been off to the side of the living room while everyone else had talked animatedly in their own little groups. “It’s a good month! Besides, Suzie’s always wanted a summer wedding.”

Still cackling, Steve had wiped mirthful tears onto the itchy, too-long sleeves of his holiday sweater, a hideous but kindhearted gift from his grandmother. Earlier, Dustin had mercilessly made fun of it, so he’d greatly enjoyed the opportunity to turn the tables on him. “Okay, fine, lovebird. Just please tell me it’s not gonna be held in a _park_.”

The sour look on Dustin’s face had only made him laugh harder, so much so that it’d even garnered some bewildered looks from the others.

And, sure enough, once December was merely a memory and May had given way to June, Dustin and Suzie had gotten married in the Hawkins Centennial Park gazebo to the harmonious sounds of birds chirping and Dustin’s mother ugly crying in the front row. Being broke graduate students with admittedly basic taste, it was purposefully low-key: Suzie had eschewed the traditional veil and poufy white dress in favor of baby’s breath sprinkled in her hair and a chiffon blouse paired with a beige skirt, whereas a freshly short-curled Dustin had sported a white button-down under a crisp tan vest and corresponding slacks. Simplicity aside, it was an undeniably charming, thoughtful ceremony between two nauseatingly sappy twentysomethings, and the intent to marry—not some display of sheer extravagance—was what mattered, and that it did.

Although some might’ve felt that the happy couple were still too young and inexperienced to take such a definitive leap, the crux of the matter was that there simply wasn’t a reason to delay the inevitable, especially with regards to their history. Despite innumerable odds, Dustin and Suzie had stayed in contact throughout high school, even though the long-distance nature of their relationship had eventually and mutually led them to seek out other teenaged courtships. But they’d remained friendly, almost obsessively so, and when Dustin left for the University of Chicago in the autumn of 1989, there were several reasons that made Suzie capitalize on a scholarship, leave Utah, and follow him to Illinois. All it took was one Intro to Physics class for them to pick up where they’d left off four years ago at Camp Knowhere, and the rest, as they say, was history.

At the reception in the basement of a local community center, Steve said as much with his best man’s toast to Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, clapping a hand to Dustin’s shoulder when the groom couldn’t quite hide how it made him wipe at his misty eyes. Steve had some reservations about an all-knowing higher power and didn’t even know if he believed in fate or destiny, but in this specific case, it oddly felt like that the universe had intervened to bring two people together. For all those years of good-natured grief that he gave Dustin for wearing his heart on his sleeve, Steve was endlessly relieved to see it end up in his friend’s favor, because finding happiness was hard, but finding someone to share it with was harder still. Nonetheless, Dustin and Suzie had each accomplished the impossible in just under a quarter of a lifetime, and that alone was well worth celebrating.

A little while later, as he watched their first dance from an empty circular table, Steve pondered that concept. He wasn’t as emotionally fulfilled as Dustin and Suzie, few people were, but he reasoned that he was happy enough; at the very least, he was undoubtedly successful, and that surely had to count for something.

_Didn’t it?_

The longer that he sat there, sipping champagne and needlessly reflecting over the last decade, the more apparent that his rising discontent became. It reached a pinnacle somewhere between his second and third glass, when he had an epiphany of sorts: maybe he wasn’t as happy as he thought he was, maybe he’d just grown complacent, maybe he was in a rut and had only just realized it. In retrospect, the last few years of his life had ranged from meandering to matter-of-fact, perhaps even hollow at times.

Immediately after Scoops Ahoy (and an embarrassingly temporary stint at Family Video), he’d been shoehorned into working at his father’s stockbroker firm in Indianapolis, and, while he’d instantly realized that he loathed everything about it, he hadn’t gotten up the nerve to move back to Hawkins until a little over a year later. In his absence, enough had changed: Jonathan and Nancy, while still dating, had gone to their respective colleges in New York and California; Lucas and Max had amicably broken up but still remained good friends; and the rest of the kids were entering their sophomore years in high school just as Robin’s gap year through WWOOF was winding down.

From then on, Steve spent a good chunk of time aimlessly flitting around, wandering and experiencing and doing anything that caught his interest. It probably would’ve gone on longer, too, had he not ended up following in his mother’s footsteps as an art dealer; it’d been a complete surprise to them both at how good he was at navigating the pitfalls of deal brokering between the elite and the public sector, leading to his mother shamelessly begging him into joining full-time. Truth be told, he didn’t mind it—hell, might’ve even grown to enjoy the challenge—because the relatively short commute allowed let him stay in quiet, familiar Hawkins most of the time, excluding when he had to travel, and extensively at that: Chicago and New York were his most frequent stops due to proximity, but it wasn’t uncommon for him to be sent to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, or even abroad.

Regardless, anything was vastly better than trying to acclimate with the sexist suits at his father’s own company, where all those bloodthirsty, big-time alphas frequently made it clear that they knew Steve was nothing of the sort; leaving those shark-infested waters had been the first time in his adult life that things had started to make sense, and the same went for his brand-new purpose with a career in the arts. Things got enjoyably hectic for a few years, so much so that he had to find out through the grapevine that Max’s mom and stepdad had gone through a particularly nasty divorce and that Jonathan and Nancy had eloped in their subsequent junior year of college.

He looked at them now, as they slow danced in a dimly lit corner to some measured love song: at their hands clasped together, at the light bouncing off their modest wedding bands, at Jonathan’s arm slung around the soft swell of Nancy’s waist, even though it was barely perceptible under her cobalt blue cotton dress. That was a recent development—Nancy, eyes bright with emotion, had only broken the news to Steve a little earlier that night, and he’d had yet to fully digest the shock. Moreover, he’d been struck speechless by her asking if he’d consider being the godfather, and his only response had been to envelop her in a congratulatory embrace.

Unlike Dustin and Suzie, whose relationship had taken a pause in high school only to resume afterwards, Steve and Nancy had never rekindled their old flame, but that’d been for the best. It’d been eons since he’d used to imagine a possible future with Nancy by his side, doing things boring couples do before eventually raising their hypothetical children together, and the passage of time had made it so easy to bury their once-intimate checkered past. Well, _almost_ , because there’d been plenty of relationship drama with Jonathan being added into the mix, but the point was that things were different now, and were they ever.

He tilted his head up and threw back the last drops in his most recent champagne flute, finding that he had trouble swallowing around the lump forming in his throat. From where he was sitting, both literally and figuratively, everyone had moved on so easily: Nancy and Jonathan were expecting a baby, and Dustin was a newly married man; in Missouri, Lucas had followed suit by proposing to his girlfriend, whereas Max had been in a long-term relationship since college with a commercial airline pilot; over in Ohio, Will had quietly found a boyfriend, and Mike and Jane were living together but were otherwise keeping the finer details of their relationship as private as possible.

To be fair, Steve wasn’t entirely bitter about their collective happiness, because it wasn’t like he’d been chronically single since nineteen. Throughout the years, he’d found the spark several times with a string of multiple partners, some casual and some serious, some his age and some older, some men and some women and some in-between; but, ultimately, nothing had stuck, because there’d never been that desire to take things to an elevated level.

It was poignant, no way around it: while his platonic relationships were airtight and his own career was flourishing, he still couldn’t help but think that he’d made a misstep somewhere in the past. Over the last hour, a voice in the back of his head had been niggling at him like a loose tooth, relentlessly making it clear that there was something out there he was missing, but he didn’t have a clue as to what. For so long, he’d carried some romanticized concept of finding happiness in someone else’s arms, but something had inexplicably changed at the sight of Jonathan’s protective hand conspicuously on Nancy’s stomach, and he wasn’t at all prepared when that same old concept, without warning, rematerialized into a faint notion of something small and warm in his own arms.

Fingering the stem of the empty glass and his Adam’s apple working against the suddenly too-tight collar of his dress shirt, Steve’s heart raced from how quickly and decidedly that he leaned into the idea. He’d just turned twenty-nine in April, had a rock-solid income, and plenty of savings to boot, all thanks to being a higher-up at his mother’s booming enterprise; without a doubt, he would be fortunate enough to never have to worry about family leave or childcare or college or anything of the sort. He had a very nice apartment close to the country club side of town, something with completely sufficient room and luckily in a great school district, but he could easily find some townhome or small house within a year or two if necessary. That all being said, he wasn’t naïve: he knew going about it alone would make everything extra difficult, knew that there would be plenty of sacrifices down the line, knew that nothing would be the same, but something just pulled in his chest, _hard_ , when he imagined coming home to the sounds of pitter-pattering little feet instead of the desolate, lonely nothingness.

He wanted a baby. _Fuck_ , he thought, dizzy from the realization and the sizable portion of alcohol coursing through his bloodstream. _I want a baby._

And that was easy enough to decide, but the only thing that stood in his way—or, at least, rightfully gave him pause—was the issue of _how_. Hawkins’ modernism had improved leaps and bounds since entering the nineties, but that didn’t mean there was a sperm bank around here that he could just stroll into to solve his newfound problem. Theoretically, he could just go to one in a major city during one of his countless business trips, but on second thought, he abandoned the option altogether; there was something so impersonal, so distant about it, even if it would be the easy way out. He was considering becoming a single parent, a situation where he’d be the only constant in the kid’s life, but he didn’t want to go into it completely blind. One day, the kid would be old enough to ask heavy questions that he wouldn’t be able to skirt around, and he at least wanted to give them more information than what little he’d gleaned from a statistical synopsis in a clinical folder.

Off the top of his head, Steve compiled a quick-and-dirty list of potential candidates. Already, he refused to consider any of his immediate acquaintances, because Hell would freeze over before he’d ever stoop that low. Jonathan was already going to be a dad on his own, and, while Steve considered him to be one of his closest friends, that didn’t mean he wanted a baby from him; as for the boys, it was nothing short of abhorrent—they might be young adults now and could make up their own minds, but he’d known them since they were tweens, and it was hard to not think of them as the younger brothers that he’d never had. With those non-options out of the way, he ruminated on random names of past schoolmates or casual companions that he still encountered here in Hawkins, but there weren’t many of those that he could seriously consider or, realistically, even find the courage to ask face-to-face.

What would he even say? _Hey, what’ve you been up to since high school? Cool, me too. Listen, can you donate some semen to me so I can have your biological child that you won’t ever get to see? Thanks!_

He was mulling over some options at work—even though that was a human resources nightmare in the making—when Max, ginger hair recently cut into a charming little bob, flounced past the opposite side of his table. Seeing her in this context, in the middle of his fruitless deliberation, made an old, long-buried memory hit Steve like a three-quarter-ton truck, and his stomach instantly twisted itself into a million knots.

_Max’s asshole stepbrother—ex-stepbrother_ , if he remembered correctly. _Billy. Billy Hargrove._

And then he was close to vomiting, which had nothing to do with his increasing inebriation, because Steve realized with equal parts dread and horror that he was actually _considering_ that fucking unstable dickhead from high school, the one who’d terrorized him in gym class at every opportunity and had reeked of hormones almost bashing his head in on the Byers’ kitchen floor. He hadn’t seen Billy Hargrove since that last summer after high school, because a year later—just a few months shy of Steve leaving Indianapolis for good—he’d returned to see Nancy, Jonathan, and Robin’s graduation, and Billy had made a point of not even showing up to his own ceremony. Steve remembered hearing later that he’d unceremoniously slunk back to California in the middle of the night; after that, for all intents and purposes, he’d simply dropped off the face of the Earth.

Understandably, it was difficult to imagine where the last ten years had taken Billy; for all Steve knew, he was on the streets, in prison, or dead. Even if he weren’t any of the above, it was simply too preposterous to think that he would have no problem siring a child, no strings attached, and relinquishing all the lifelong responsibility that came with it. Sure, Billy had been an unbearable prick back in the day—probably still was—but alphas simply didn’t, couldn’t walk away from their offspring, because it just wasn’t in their nature. And Billy was an alpha, no doubt about it, and he’d be more likely to beat Steve into a pulp than to ever acquiesce to such a tremendous request.

Steve used every excuse in the book to try to dissuade himself from maintaining Billy as an actual possibility, because, frankly, he didn’t like him back then, and he sure as hell didn’t have a reason to now. But that was easier said than done, because he also very clearly remembered the raw sexual magnetism that Billy had radiated like a furnace, all tight jeans and filthy, bottomless eyes; on some subconscious level, Steve hated himself for wanting _that_ to be the potential father of his potential child, but those genes were astronomical, out of this galaxy and the next one over, and he did, _damn it_ , he really did. If Billy, wherever he was, happened to still be free and alive, Steve was starting to find himself more and more willing to track him down and make it very worth his while.

_Oh, fuck me. Billy_ fucking _Hargrove._

“Hey, Max,” Steve’s hoarse voice, bordering on strangled, cut through the pleasant noise of the reception with ease. It was a small boon that the music had recently changed to something upbeat, because he didn’t think he could do this with a melancholic soundtrack. All those slow songs were really starting to bum him out.

Without delay, she turned her head at the sound of her name, and they locked eyes from halfway across the room; all he had to do was give her a tiny nod, and she started to loop back around to his table. Preparing himself, he cleared his throat under the cover of the drums and dangerously squeezed his glass, feeling how impossibly thin and delicate it was beneath his sweaty fingers—a perfect mirror of his own mental state.

“Wassup?” Max asked as soon as she eased to a stop beside his seat, smiling down at him as if everything was normal, even though he knew he’d gone paper white under the dimmed lighting. She was idly toying with a clutch bag between her palms, and the incessant movement made it hard to focus on anything else.

He cleared his throat again, because the lump hadn’t gone away; in fact, it was getting to the point of being a choking hazard. “Can I ask you a dumb question?”

“Of course,” she told him easily. “Shoot.”

“D’you…have you got your, um, stepbrother’s phone number?”

She immediately stopped moving her hands, and her cheery expression went slack. “What?”

Steve took a deep breath, not liking the feeling of being unable to get enough air in his lungs no matter how he tried, and the lies— _are they?_ —followed easily. “Like, I heard he moved back to California a long time ago, but I’ve been thinking about the past recently, and, I dunno, I kinda want to get in touch…catch up, old times, y’know? Bury the hatchet?”

Now rightfully suspicious, Max scanned every inch of Steve’s open face as she twisted at the decorative ring on her index finger. “Well, actually,” she began, looking around and then leaning closer towards his ear, as if what she was about to say was a matter of utmost secrecy. Although the basement wasn’t overly raucous, the music and ongoing conversations meant that there was no need to whisper here, much less about someone that nobody else in the vicinity gave one lick about. “You didn’t hear it from me, but he, uh, moved back here a few months ago—temporarily, that is.”

The sudden eruption of nerves in his stomach sent gooseflesh prickling at his skin. “What? Really?”

Max looked around again as she nodded, earrings flopping against her neck. She looked so grownup in her canary sundress and butterfly sandals that Steve could scarcely believe this was the same knobby-kneed tomboy he sometimes used to chauffeur between dingy arcades and cookie-cutter cul-de-sacs. “Yeah, he had to take an extended leave of absence from the force ’cause his dad was in a car accident last December. He didn’t want to, at all, but he was the only next of kin.”

“The force?” Steve repeated, making a face that featured his nostrils flaring in confusion. “Like in _Star Wars_? Wait, what exactly does he do?”

With a huff, she flung herself into the closest seat next to his spot at the table, slapping her purse down and drawing her metal folding chair in closer so they could continue talking without any passerby eavesdropping. Once again, that level of discretion was wholly unnecessary, but Steve didn’t say anything about it. He was just lucky that she was here and willing to share what seemed to be unspoiled details.

“He’s LAPD,” she explained, crossing her legs at the knee. “Still is, he’s just working here for the time being. And, before you say anything, he’s a really good cop— _seriously_ , I mean it, don’t give me that look. A few years ago, he got into a really bad shootout and seriously almost died. He’s like a new person compared to the guy you knew, honest.” She gave him a reproachful look to counteract his disbelieving, mind-boggled stare, but then she conceded the point with a head wobble of her own. “Okay, what I meant is that he got a _little_ better once he’d moved back to California, even though he was still kind of a dick, but almost dying is what permanently changed him. If you don’t believe me, you should call him up and see for yourself. I think he’d like to talk to you, too.”

Coolly, she slid her left hand into her purse and dug out a pen and a clean cocktail napkin; she then got to work jotting down a set of random numbers as he looked on, gaping like a fish.

“He’s a _police officer_?” Steve finally managed. He was painfully aware that he’d cracked open a can of worms, but this new development only succeeded in further piquing his interest, even beyond the baby issue. Out of everything that Max could’ve said, he wouldn’t have guessed this outcome in a million years, quite the opposite; he’d expected something like ‘getaway driver’, ‘drug lord’, or ‘serial killer’, hell, anything that involved him breaking the law instead of upholding it. “Who was in a _shootout_? What the—why didn’t you say anything?”

Max shrugged her shoulders as she wrote. “I guess I figured the others would’ve been more disappointed to hear that he’d lived.”

Steve didn’t know how to feel about that. On one hand, the Billy that he’d known was, to put it lightly, a nasty piece of work, and it was still difficult to think of that version in a sympathetic light; on the other, he certainly wouldn’t wish the man dead, much less in the line of duty.

As for everyone else…unfortunately, Max had a point.

“Wait,” Steve held up a hand as some of her earlier words replayed in his head. “Did you say he’s been working here? As in Hawkins P.D.? Alongside _Hopper_?” For emphasis, he jabbed his thumb in the heavyset man’s direction, who was across the room talking to Lucas’s parents with a beefy arm slung around Joyce’s thin shoulders; between his cream-colored polo shirt and booming laugh, he wasn’t exactly hard to miss.

She shrugged again, as casual as can be; it would’ve been infuriating if he were operating on a normal wavelength, but his brain had already melted to mush some time ago. “Nobody asked.”

Floored, Steve slumped back in his chair, faintly wondering how much more alcohol it would take to get properly blackout drunk—scratch that, how much alcohol it would take to forget any of this had ever happened.

_Not nearly enough, that’s for damn sure._

Max capped her pen and, when she looked up and caught sight of his face, couldn’t quite hide her amusement; she slid the napkin across the tabletop with her index finger and left it an inch from his closed fist. “Lemme know how it goes,” she smirked, taking her purse back in her hands and snapping it shut. “He shouldn’t, but if he happens to give you any shit, tell me. I’ll straighten him out.”

Steve, nodding dumbly, reflexively swallowed as he stared down at the hastily scribbled numbers, even though there wasn’t a drop of moisture left in his mouth. “…Thanks, Max.”

Still grinning, she stood from the table and started to slip back into the crowd, but not before giving him a reassuring pat on the forearm in passing; she ultimately came to a halt next to her pilot boyfriend, who turned from his own conversation to face her with a blinding smile. At the sight of it, Steve felt that pull of longing again, keen and deep, something that was becoming an increasingly common annoyance.

But he took another look at the abstract combination in his hands, and he suddenly felt grounded by the tangible evidence of Billy’s vitality, something of which that’d become entwined with his burgeoning hope. Folding the napkin in half and shoving it into a front pocket, he also pushed away from the table and stood on legs made of jelly—he was somehow even tipsier than he’d previously figured—with the intent to get a much-needed refill. As he made his way to the open bar, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was finally on track to ending the ongoing emptiness that he’d managed to coexist with for entirely too long.

* * *

_June 6, 1995_

It took him a few days to muster up enough courage to call the number, but it had nothing to do with changing his mind in the time since. Truthfully, he’d expected to wake up the morning after with a wicked hangover and a profound realization that the concept of him having a baby on his own had been nothing more than the ramblings of a wishy-washy drunken idiot, but nothing of the sort ever came. Well, the hangover did, and with a vengeance, but the intent otherwise remained: this really, truly was something that he wanted to undertake.

As for the delay itself, good old-fashioned nerves were the main culprit, but there was also the additional fact that Max hadn’t really told him much about Billy, only that he technically lived in Los Angeles and was semi-temporarily in the vicinity of Hawkins, which wasn’t exactly helpful to the situation at hand. Police officers’ shifts were all over the map, literally, and he didn’t know what he’d be interrupting when he finally decided to call sometime during Tuesday evening. If Billy took late shifts or was just frequently busy on weeknights, Steve didn’t have a clue, and he squeezed his eyes shut and cringed more and more with each unanswered hum of the busy signal. He’d already made up his mind that he wasn’t going to leave a message, because that would be too bizarre for either of them.

“Yeah?”

The other line finally connected on the second to last ring, just seconds shy of Steve hanging up and trying again tomorrow night or the next night or never again, and, in response, his mouth went impossibly dry. It was Billy all right, no doubt about it, and the realization of what he was doing left Steve temporarily incapable of speech, not only because his throat had tightened nearly to the point of asphyxiation.

_You fucking idiot, Steven, really? You’re lucky this asshole didn’t snap your neck or put you in a fucking coma. Christ, what the fuck are you doing?_

“Hey,” he croaked out, acutely aware of how pathetically lame that he sounded the second the half-formed word left his lips. “Uh, Billy Hargrove, right?”

There was some shifting on the line, as if he was suspiciously moving the receiver from ear to ear. “Who’s this?”

Billy’s voice was abrasive, almost biting, and the police officer concept suddenly held a little more water. He sounded just as intimidating as he had in high school, but there was a calm formality to his sternness, as if he refused to be intimidated by whomever had gotten hold of his personal number. Steve would’ve found this admirable if his useless brain hadn’t essentially just shut down on its own accord.

“Steve Harrington,” he quickly added, because something told him this situation could go south in a moment’s notice if he didn’t nip it in the bud in time. But that was also a gamble, because his name was sure to invoke many old memories, most of them bad, and theirs was a relationship not quite worth rekindling. “We went to Hawkins High together? Class of ’85, you ’86? Had that…uh… _dilemma_ in front of Max and her friends?”

The other side was eerily silent for a good thirty seconds, and Steve held his breath the whole time; he even abstained from blinking until his vision was swimming at the corners. He waited for Billy to start insulting him, to start yelling, or to simply hang up on him, but nothing prepared him for the low, almost sardonic chuckling that started coming through the line. When he spoke again, Billy’s tone was silkily casual, a complete one-eighty from before. “Shit, Harrington, is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Steve replied, uneasy and awkward and getting a weird sense of déjà-vu as he talked. “How…how’ve you been, man?”

More scoffing, as if Billy couldn’t believe it, a sentiment that Steve could wholeheartedly sympathize with. “How did you—”

“Max.” He wasn’t trying to throw her under the bus, and it probably would’ve been better if he’d given a white lie, but the last thing that he wanted was to start off on a dishonest foot. “But only because I asked her for it.”

“Why you callin’?”

Steve winced, even though Billy’s words weren’t harsh, at least, not as much as they’d been before. If anything, now that his rumbling laughter had died away, he’d started to sound as stupefied as Steve felt. “I—you’re near Hawkins, right?”

“Yeah.” And then, “Max toldja that too?”

“Uh—yeah.”

When he didn’t say anything else, Steve didn’t have to ask to know that Billy was still waiting for an answer to his previous question. Steve cleared his throat, which was still too tight for his comfort, then forced himself to proceed.

“I wanted to see if we could talk ’bout something?” It took only a second for him to consider actually doing it like this, calling him up and asking him so abruptly, so impersonally, without even any warning, and his gut reaction was to immediately nix that awful idea and to default to one that was much, much worse. Ideally, he wouldn’t be in this situation at all if he had even a shred of restraint, but he didn’t, and it was too late to hang up. “Listen, I don’t really want to do this over the phone. If you’re open to it, can I, like, meet you somewhere? After work, sometime, maybe?”

Billy remained silent, and Steve used his slightly fuzzy memory of how he’d looked in high school to try to imagine that striking face now deep in thought. Surely too much time had passed for Billy to still be sporting that hairspray-drenched mullet and double denim, but, unfortunately, he just couldn’t imagine him any other way. He wanted to think that, like himself, not that much about Billy had changed over the past decade, but the surprise of him being a police officer single-handedly threw a wrench in that theory. Anything was fair game at this point, especially how he looked. He would just have to wait and see.

The line crackled ominously when Billy finally piped up again. “…Sure.”

“Great,” Steve breathed, a wash of relief flooding his veins from his head to his toes. Eager now, his stupid mouth came up with a location faster than his stupider brain could process it. “How about the old quarry?”

And then he had to pull the phone away from his ear so he could swear at himself, instantly wishing that he’d picked literally anywhere else in a twenty-mile radius, but there was nothing that he could do about it now. Considering his line of work, Billy could probably smell weakness, and the fickler that he came off now, the faster that Billy would eat him alive later. “I—I haven’t been down there in years, and it’s going to rain tomorrow and Thursday, but it’s supposed to be a nice day on Friday…so…after work, five, or something?”

“I get off at six.”

“Seven, then.”

Both lines fell silent, what with them seemingly waiting for one another to say something else before ending the call; for what felt like an eternity of dead air, nothing of the sort happened. It probably would’ve gone on even longer if Billy hadn’t suddenly given in by repeating, almost to himself, “Seven.” He then hung up just as abruptly, leaving a buzzing dial tone in his stead before Steve even had a chance to open his mouth.

As he set the phone down, Steve’s heart was racing in his ears like he’d just run a marathon, and a laundry list of unasked questions bounced around in his head, like ping pong balls, in time with his pulse; while he waited for his blood pressure to return to normal levels, he ruminated over their extraordinarily brief exchange—which, albeit stilted, had still gone better than he’d hoped. All right, so Billy hadn’t exactly sounded pleased to hear from him, but he hadn’t sounded angry, either, and Steve chalked that up to an infinitesimal win. So, now that step one—tracking him down—and step two—calling him up—were both complete, that just left step three: figuring out before Friday exactly how he was going to ask Billy for a casual donation of his genetic material.

In hindsight, if there was one good thing about accidentally picking the quarry, he could at least drown himself there when it all went to shit.


	2. Chapter 2

_June 9, 1995_

Friday was as uneventful as every other day in his life, save for the rather foreboding cloud that’d been hanging over his head since Tuesday. He’d done his daily commute to the charter office in Fort Wayne, which was about an hour away—forty-five minutes without traffic or, maybe, with a touch of speeding—and had clocked in a good day’s work. He had an upcoming trip next Wednesday to some client’s nascent gallery in Brooklyn that he wasn’t looking forward to, and he wondered if whatever happened tonight could possibly affect that. Steve ran his fingers through his hair at the thought; by this time next week, would he be busy preparing to get fucking _inseminated_ by Billy? He didn’t want to get his hopes up, but _Jesus_. Talk about weekend plans.

As soon as he got home, he headed straight to his bedroom to change his clothes and to check the answering machine; there was only one message awaiting him, some unknown number with an Indianapolis area code that he’d only missed by about fifteen minutes. He hit play, half-expecting a wrong number, only to immediately hit redial when Dustin’s prerecorded greeting burst forth from the speaker instead.

For the rest of the summer, Dustin and Suzie were going to be spending their extended honeymoon traveling around the Midwest to every hands-on science museum that they could, quite literally, get their hands on; currently, that meant flitting around Indiana before heading out to metropolises in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Naturally, just like that time that Dustin had shared his gushy wedding plans, Steve found no small amount of humor in the fact that their ideal romantic getaway was essentially a middle school field trip. Although—and he would never admit this aloud, least of all to Dustin—he secretly reasoned that it was kind of cool, in its own way; it might not be his cup of tea, but it was _very_ on brand for them. Even if they’d had the money to go out of the continental United States on some once-in-a-lifetime nerd voyage, he had a hunch that they still would’ve done the same thing, just on a larger scale. Well, along with seeing an active volcano in Hawaii or visiting Al-Khazneh in Jordan à la _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_ , but those would’ve been the only exceptions. Probably.

“Yo, Steve, you there?”

He’d already put Dustin on speakerphone so that he could shrug off his scarlet cashmere sweater—it was only the second week of June, but the air conditioning at work was already stupidly overkill—and replace it with something lighter, both in terms of fabric and unpretentiousness. He settled on a white Henley, and, while he kept his work khakis on, he rolled the cuffs up to his ankles like he did whenever he wore jeans. “Yeah, hey, I’m here. So, how’s the honeymoon so far?”

As he changed, Dustin cheerfully told him every single last detail (“I’ve, like, touched a Van de Graaff generator _five_ times in the last _week_ , Steve, I’m having a damn _blast_ ,”) and then some. Once he’d hung his sweater back up in the closet, Steve sat on the corner of his bed, elbows on his knees and chin cupped in his hands, and patiently let Dustin blow off enough steam until he could get around to basic phone etiquette.

“So,” Dustin finally said after taking a deep breath, considering he hadn’t had one in a while. “Anything new with you?” And then he actually laughed, like that was supposed to be a good joke.

Steve just wrinkled his nose up at the speaker. _Do I dare?_

He did, as it turned out, but only because he was unable to help himself. Instead of ripping the Band-Aid off completely, he settled on, “Maybe,” taking care to make it sound as cryptic as possible just to send Dustin into a feeding frenzy; it was a sneaky tactic, but also an effective one, given that it worked like a charm.

“What the hell does that mean?” Dustin went all accusatory, utterly oblivious to the fact that he was playing right into his hands. “You finally get a girlfriend? Boyfriend? Dog? Cat? All of the above?”

“Oh, ha-ha,” Steve forcibly replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Hey, I’ve blabbed on about me and the missus. It’s your turn to pitch in, muchacho.”

As per usual with their lengthy telephone conversations, Steve had foreseen eventually getting around to the topic of his own life—not that there was ever much to report on, but he’d prepared for it nonetheless. The original plan was to keep this whole baby affair solidly under lock and key from everyone for the indefinite future, and, depending on his encounter with Billy tonight, maybe permanently. He’d only started teasing Dustin with it out of pure fun, but an inexplicable impulse (recently, one of several) made Steve feel open to confiding in him after all; if Dustin wasn’t his brother in all but blood by now, he might as well be. Although temporarily withholding his own secret didn’t necessarily make him dishonest, all he could hear in his head was Jane repeating, _friends don’t lie_ , something that she still so insistently reminded everyone of. Hell, maybe more now than ever, because they were all older and spread out over several states, and the occasional pitfalls of long-distance friendships weren’t as easy to overcome compared to when they were growing up together in Hawkins.

“You sure?” Steve asked carefully, not exactly worried but also not looking forward to Dustin’s impending judgement.

He merely snorted. “Okay, now I really have to know. What is it?”

_Friends don’t lie._

“What the fuck,” Dustin mumbled once Steve had told him everything, that is, everything minus Billy’s to-be-determined role in all of this. He didn’t see the point in needlessly giving Dustin an aneurysm if things with Billy didn’t pan out, and, knowing him, they probably wouldn’t; so, they’d only cross that bridge once— _if_ —they got to it. “A _baby_? Whatever happened to getting a _cat_?”

“Okay, enough with the pet jokes. You know I’m allergic. It’s out of the question.”

“Are you even dating anyone?” His voice hitched as it got higher and higher. “Who would the other parent even be?”

“…I’m still working on that.”

Dumbstruck, Dustin managed to make an incredulous noise that doubled as a hysterical laugh. “Sorry, exactly how long have you been considering this?”

“Okay, truthfully, only really since last Thursday,” Steve admitted. He knew perfectly well how ludicrous that came off, but he didn’t have the luxury of lying to soften the blow. “However, I’ve always said I wanted kids someday, and, well, why put it off any longer? It just feels correct, man. I can’t explain it.”

“ _Thursday_ —what the hell about my _wedding_ ,” Dustin spluttered, “made you suddenly decide you wanted to have a friggin’ baby on your own?”

Steve swallowed his urge to make light of the situation, because Dustin had raised a rather valid point. He figured that it was worth throwing a little more kindle on the fire, because, hey, he might as well spill (nearly) all his guts in one sitting. “Don’t tell anyone, but Nancy’s pregnant. She and Jonathan want me to be the godfather.”

Dustin gave a little gasp midway through his sentence, and he gave another one after Steve had finished. “Wha—hey, that’s great! Good for them! Do Mike or Will know?”

“Dunno,” Steve shrugged, glancing at his bedside alarm clock to make sure he had enough time to get to the quarry a little early; he did, but Dustin had the proclivity to talk his ear off, and he wanted to keep this already-lengthy discussion to a minimum. Also, he didn’t want an excuse to keep gossiping about Nancy, considering that her secret hadn’t been his to divulge in the first place. “But it just got me thinking…like, _really_ thinking. Being a godfather would be nice and all, but I just…want the whole shebang. If it’s right for them, why can’t it be right for me? I’m older than they are, and I’m financially secure, and, I mean, I don’t need to tell you that I’m an omega, so there’s no reason I can’t physically do it.”

“Yeah,” Dustin snarked. “But you’re so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you _should_.”

“Are you seriously quoting _Jurassic Park_ at me and trying to get away with it?”

“Hey, if it works, yeah.” He graciously let Steve huff out a small laugh at his expense before going very serious, somehow sounding much older and wiser than he really was, or at least, seemed to be. “Steve, tell me the truth—are you really sure about this?”

Steve exhaled and, suddenly needing something to do with his hands, reached over the nightstand to gently twist the phone cord between his fingers. He’d been on a roller coaster of sentimental feelings and reasonable doubts over the last few days, but he’d stayed focused on what he’d gain from this, not on what he’d lose, and the answer had never wavered. Besides, who in the world wouldn’t be utterly terrified at the prospect of being a parent? Join the club.

“Yes,” he affirmed, because he didn’t want Dustin to think he was any less determined than he actually was. Although this immediate decision had taken him a few years to work up towards, it was true what he’d said before: the desire had always been there, it’d just been on the back burner. Thinking on it, the first time that he’d really considered having kids down the line was when he was still with Nancy, but, had that panned out, it would’ve been a different story altogether; they would’ve had to adopt or use donated genetic material, because biology dictated that they’d never be able to have their own children. Not that there was anything wrong with that, of course, but there was something to be said about not needing to wait for a partner nor having to jump through hoops at some adoption agency. To put it mildly, he’d never shot a gun, but he was nonetheless ready to pull the trigger. “I am, Dustin. Completely.”

Dustin blew air into the receiver. “Well, although I’m still fucking blindsided by this, I guess all I can say is good luck, Steve. You’ve got one life, and it’s short, so you should do what makes you happy.”

“I think I like this newly married Dustin,” Steve said with a small, surprised smile. “You’re a lot less judgy than before. Tell your wife I said good job at getting you under control.”

“I’ll be sure to let Suzie know her efforts are appreciated,” he panned. “But, seriously, you know I’m always here if you need a sympathetic ear…to the best of my abilities, that is. I’m not Jesus. In the meantime, one little request—maybe call Robin with those _finer_ details, hint, hint? Ixnay the exsay talk?”

The brief moment of levity (and the sudden Pig Latin) helped to make Steve laugh again, and he realized that a weight had lifted from his shoulders at getting some unexpected support for his craziest scheme to date. “Yeah, no promises. If you want to be considered for godfather, you’re gonna have to grin and bear it all, understand?”

“I’m already going to be the godfather,” Dustin pshawed, blessedly abstaining from doing his best (worst) Vito Corleone impression for the time being. “What, is that even up for debate?”

Steve just hummed. “You’re forgetting that I haven’t told Robin yet, and she’s undoubtedly gonna stake her own claim. If this works out, knowing you two maniacs, I’m just going to save myself the headache and flip a coin. So, heads or tails?”

“ _Mm_ , okay, shit. Tails. No, wait, heads. Eh, you decide.”

* * *

At precisely eight minutes until seven, a lone vehicle and a figure on its hood were already waiting for Steve as he pulled into the Sattler quarry.

Swearing under his breath, he parked a reasonable distance away and turned the engine off; then, he just sat there, gripping the steering wheel for support and decidedly not looking in the other direction. He’d intended to get here at six-thirty or so, give or take ten minutes, but then Dustin had earnestly started to bullet point the advantages of him being the better godparent over Robin, and it’d been too amusing to cut short. As inconsequential as it was, he couldn’t help but feel disadvantaged at having to get out and walk over to Billy’s vehicle, rather than vice versa; considering what he was about to ask him for, it would’ve been nice to have started off with some semblance of an upper hand. But that ship had sailed, so, he just had to bite the bullet and get this over with.

The quarry was exactly as he remembered: wide, cavernous, dusty. At this point in the early evening, it was also increasingly shadowed, even though the sun wasn’t actually setting, at least, not yet; however, it _was_ drifting further and further towards the horizon, and that bright beam of gold was just low enough to blind him. Raising a hand against the sky and squinting downwards as he walked, he slowed to a halt as he came up to the front bumper of the only other car there. He pulled his hand away and peered up at the same time, and, as his photoreceptors immediately absorbed the sight before him, a singular sentence was the very first thing to drift into the forefront of his mind.

_He’s like a new person compared to the guy you knew, honest._

Max hadn’t lied, because here was the proof, in the flesh, and it was the final nail in the coffin of Steve’s prior assumptions. Even in this lighting, where it was so painfully bright that it was hard to look up at anything for too long, it was instantly crystal clear that the Billy he’d once known was long gone, for something else entirely had taken his place.

Perched on the dented hood of a nondescript older Chevy, William Hargrove fingered an unlit cigarette in the crook of his mouth as he watched Steve’s every move from behind a darkly tinted pair of black Ray-Bans. He was just as in shape as ever, no, more than he’d been at seventeen: his biceps were bigger, more toned, and his shoulders were broader under his well-worn heather gray V-neck that, for him, was ordinary to the point of absurdity. Further down, his thigh muscles filled out his light wash Levi’s, and, while they were snug, this pair wasn’t anywhere as absurdly skintight as what he’d worn in the eighties. Unashamedly looking a little more closely at that part of his body, Steve noted a concealed holster not-so-inconspicuously clipped onto his belt, and, beneath the straight-cut pant legs, a pair of scuffed steel-toed black boots resting against the front grill of his truck. If one thing had stayed the same so far, he seemingly wore the same amount of jewelry as he used to: there was that old dangling pendant necklace, a chunky gold band on his left hand ring finger and one silver pinky ring next to it, an oversized brown watch and thumb ring on his right, and a small, basic circular earring hooked in one ear. Most of it added up to slight but noticeable changes, but there was nothing subtle about the biggest change by far: the obvious absence of that infamous mullet.

Billy hadn’t gone for a high-and-tight as most officers did, but it was still short, neatly parted over on one side and coiffed up top, and cut close on the sides in a clean, sandy blond fade. Not hiding under a scraggly, ratty mop matted with hairspray strangely suited him—it made him look incredibly mature, and, with his thick eyebrows drawn together above his sunglasses and his mouth set, he looked every inch of an off-duty cop that was not to be trifled with under any circumstances. Of course, that also meant he was just as unapproachable as he’d been in high school, but where that apprehension used to come from Billy’s not-so-simmering adolescent rage, this was nothing but an eerie coolness that came from being part of the long arm of the law. He was one of them now, through and through, and the way that he gave off the impression of being so effortlessly put together bordered on infuriating.

Steve knew he was staring, couldn’t help it, so he tried to play it off as if the sun was in his eyes—which, it was, but considering the sight in front of him, it suddenly seemed tame in comparison.

“Harrington,” Billy abruptly greeted, the inset corners of his pink lemonade lips upturned. The sunlight illuminated his well-groomed mustache and the faint tracing of stubble around his cheeks and jaw, and it was nothing short of mesmerizing to see that smooth mouth in fluid motion after so many years of being a static memory. “Long time, no see.”

Swallowing, Steve rubbed at his eyes with one hand and tilted his body to the side, getting out of the direction of the sunbeams, and made what constituted as direct eye contact with someone who was wearing sunglasses. “Yeah, sure is.”

“So,” Billy tilted his head, baring a vein on his neck as his shoulder moved. “Why the fuck am I out here on a Friday night?”

“Cutting right to the chase, huh?” Steve muttered, now shifting his hands to his hips so he could stand akimbo. He kept scouring Billy’s aesthetically structured face, and, goddammit, if he wasn’t hotter now than he was then. They both were little more than overgrown boys in high school, still working on shedding the last stubborn vestiges of gawkish pubescence, but that’d been a long time ago; from his updated appearance and the confidence that he exuded tenfold, Billy was nothing short of a man now. If the trickle of cold sweat down of the small of his back was any indication, Steve was, too.

Ever unflappable, Billy snorted, pulling a brushed metal lighter out from a side pocket. It glimmered in the sunlight and reflected a square spotlight off Steve’s torso that he swore he could feel through his shirt. “It’s what I do.”

Steve shook his head. “So I’ve heard. Tell me, how’d a guy like you get involved with the fuzz? I would’ve figured you’d had a rap sheet a mile long by the time you turned eighteen.”

Billy lifted the lighter to the cigarette between his lips and cupped a hand over it to block the breeze; pulling it away, he snapped it closed with a flick of his wrist and stuffed it back into his pocket, and his nostrils flared as smoke seeped out of them like a dragon’s exhale. “Well, you thought wrong,” he said dryly, between drags. “Just some misdemeanors, and I more than made up for them back at the academy.” He used his now-smoking cigarette to point emphatically at Steve. “Now, answer the question.”

“You don’t even want to pretend to care about what I’ve been up to?”

His lip quirked, but his face remained impassive. “Nope.”

_Ah, fuck. Now or never._

“I’m going to ask something,” Steve began, and his fight-or-flight instincts were itching at him to return to his car and drive off into the almost sunset. But, judging from the look of him and the obvious gun at his hip, Billy wouldn’t let that slide without an actual fight; so, unless he really did want to jump into the ravine, he was stuck here, on the cusp of asking an incomprehensible question without any time allotted to soften the blow. “And, if I offend you, don’t shoot me. I’ll just leave and never contact you again, alright?”

That visibly piqued Billy’s curiosity, so much so that he slid off the hood of his truck and stalked the small distance over to Steve with an absurd amount of strutting. Once closer, Steve could smell his unfiltered cigarette, lingering traces of aftershave, whatever crisp laundry product he used on his clothes, and something heavier, headier, which he could not place; it filled Steve’s nostrils, making him dizzy from how unnaturally strong and stirring that it was, especially since they were surrounded by open air.

“Sorry, pretty boy,” Billy drawled, but the line between his eyes was only growing deeper with each passing second. “I’m not looking to enter a relationship right now. You understand.”

“No, that’s—” Steve stopped and shook his head like a dog, mortified. All right, so Billy was ungodly good-looking, but he’d have to be an idiot to willingly enter a committed relationship with this fucking fiend. It was bad enough that Billy was only referring to him by his surname _and_ that old, twisted sobriquet; he tried not to think about the fact that both were coming off more confusingly flirtatious than ever. “No, the exact opposite, actually.”

“Oh?” Billy raised a dark, full eyebrow, the one with the thin white scar running through it. Even though Steve could tell he was enjoying toying with him, as a side note, he was quietly impressed that Billy was going out of his way to exhale smoke away from his direction. The younger Billy, the one with something to prove, wouldn’t have hesitated to just blow it directly into Steve’s face and salaciously lick his lips at him afterwards. “Now, casual is something I _can_ do, Harrington.”

“God, shut up for a minute,” Steve scoffed, throwing his hands up next to his head and shaking them to emphasize his point. “I want a baby, asshole.”

As sudden as slicing a marionette’s strings, Billy’s brazenly overconfident swagger vanished; in his shock, he almost dropped his half-finished cigarette.

Steve prayed for the earth to open up and swallow him whole.

“Before you say anything, just let me explain, okay? I want to do this completely on my own. There’d be no commitments or child support or any costs on your end—you wouldn’t even be on the birth certificate, much less part of the picture.” He paused to grimace at Billy’s disturbed reaction, for he’d gone so deathly still that his chest wasn’t moving; there was no telling when Billy had last taken a breath, if at all. “Listen, I know this sounds so fucking crazy, and it’s a lot to ask considering we haven’t spoken in years and definitely aren’t friends, never were, but I figured someone like you wouldn’t give a fuck as long as you didn’t have to be responsible for anything. You probably already do shit like this for fun anyways.”

He didn’t have a clue why he’d suddenly started insulting him; perhaps it was his nerves, a defensive tic, or, maybe, his subconscious teenage self peeking through because he was still bitter at how badly Billy had treated him all those years ago. But, whatever the reason, it didn’t seem to matter at all: with the sunlight playing off his face, Billy looked anything but insulted, probably because shock had left him too paralyzed to notice the slight. A few heartbeats passed wherein only his jaw worked, and, when he finally spoke again, it was uncharacteristically subdued. “…You thought wrong…again.”

Steve had expected this, but the acute, rushing sense of disappointment still hurt. Avoiding Billy’s already-shaded eyes, he nodded bitterly and let his hands fall loosely at his sides. “Well, thanks anyways. Sorry for bothering you. Have a nice life.”

He turned away so he could sulk back to his car, needing to get away as soon as possible so that he could lick his wounds in private, but he’d only taken a half step when a firm hand snaked out and grabbed him, _hard_ , by the shoulder. Head whipping around, he found him merely inches away; they locked eyes, and, in the span of a second, Billy took the initiative to remove his sunglasses and numbly slide them into the collar of his shirt.

“That’s not what I meant,” Billy mumbled, dropping his arm to his hip like he’d been personally burned. He was still dazed, blinking languidly at the sudden brunt of unfiltered daylight and painfully stripped of his machismo; although the quarry was isolated and peaceful, Steve still had to strain to hear him. “I don’t…you said I’ve done this before. I haven’t.”

“Oh.” Steve blinked several times in a row before turning his entire body to face Billy again, all while feeling the nerves in his shoulder tingle and fire from where that hand had momentarily dug in. Those glass-sharp, icy blue eyes were harder to stare into than the sun, so full of a cocktail of emotions that Steve couldn’t aptly read them in a million years; logic made him want to say that the chances still weren’t good, but, then again, Billy had just prevented him from leaving over a simple misunderstanding. All Steve knew was that he knew nothing, full stop.

“Why?”

Steve startled a little and made himself stop trying to decipher that deeply penetrating gaze. “Sorry?”

“Why me?”

 _Good question_ , his traitorous brain supplied. _Why him?_

“Honestly?” Steve responded, scratching nervously at the palms of his hands. “You’re someone I _knew_ , not someone I _know_. If, when the kid ever asks about their other biological parent someday, I’d like to have some personal anecdote to tell them, and I can’t get that with an anonymous donor. Other than right now, we typically live on two different sides of the country, which would make avoiding each other for the rest of our lives pretty easy. And, most of all, come on,” he gestured up and down in the direction of Billy’s body. “It’s not fuckin’ rocket science.”

A split-second look of something akin to pleasure flashed across his face, so briefly that Steve almost blinked and missed it; he would’ve said something about it, but the chance passed him by when Billy’s previous expression—a cracked façade of indifference that could not conceal his rising confusion and panic—returned in an instant, almost as if it’d never left. They stood in silence for a good minute or two, both lost in their own tumultuous thoughts and staring each other down like they were waiting for the other’s next move. When Billy was finally ready to say something, he opened his mouth with a tiny _pop_ ; Steve’s eyes snapped to those pink lips, and he readied himself for the inevitable verbal evisceration or, if he could dream, reluctant agreement.

Instead, his answer fell somewhere between both.

Billy, dropping his spent cigarette butt to the ground and grinding it beneath his boot, wiped his seemingly sweaty hands off on his jeans; either he’d very suddenly started pointedly avoiding Steve’s eyes, or there was something more to the spot over his shoulder that he wouldn’t stop staring at. “Can I…think about it?”

There was that eruption of butterflies again. Steve had to valiantly fight to keep his blatant eagerness off his face, but he compromised on what he hoped passed for an easy-going smile. “Absolutely, of course, take as much time as you need. I mean, I’d planned on taking advantage of my upcoming heat, but I can wait until next month, that’s f—”

“I’ll be in touch,” Billy interrupted, and then he slammed his sunglasses back onto his face, turned on his heel, and stalked over to the driver’s door so he could fling it open without abandon. The rest of Steve’s words died on his tongue as that old truck roared to life, and, when Billy threw it into drive and sped away, the tires squealed on the road like a drag racer doing doughnuts. He could hear the Doppler shift in action as the noisy engine gradually got fainter the further it flew down the road, fleeing the quarry like Billy had just committed a crime—which was ironic, his profession and past considered.

And, thus, when he couldn’t hear him any longer, that was the end of their ten-year reunion.

“Shit,” Steve spoke aloud, eyeing the deep tire marks on the sand and gravel mixture leading to the highway. In contrast to Billy’s dramatic exit, Steve unhurriedly walked back to his own car, wondering more ‘if’ than ‘when’ that he would get that call. Something told him that next week’s trip to New York would be going on as scheduled; as for his heat this month, he would just have to endure it with plenty of blockers as he usually did, easy peasy. He’d expected that, anyways, because it’d been a pipe dream to think that he could’ve been close to trying so soon.

But his unabashed optimism didn’t embarrass him, because, if not now, then there was always next month, or the month after that, or maybe even the one after that. As he busied himself with turning the car back on and fiddling around with the radio, he was determined not to let it get him down, because a deferral was better than a rejection, and both were better than Billy outright knocking the shit out of him. Steve knew that he’d just dropped a bombshell at his feet, knew that this was not a decision that should be taken lightly: if Billy went through with it, it would be enormous and life-changing decision for them both. Even if Billy wouldn’t be a dad, he’d still be someone’s father, and that had to be a terrifying concept for someone who’d probably never been faced with such a prospect. It was more than perfectly understandable that he would need time to think about it, much less come to terms with it.

 _Whatever happens_ , Steve assured himself, _it’ll work out eventually. He might be the best looking, but he isn’t the only option out there._ Because, just as a certain someone had so colorfully told him so long ago, there were always more fish in the sea.

* * *

_June 11, 1995_

“No way,” Robin giggled. Through the phone, he could hear her nails dutifully typing on her laptop keyboard. “He just ran away from you? What a wiener.”

“He didn’t run,” Steve clarified. “He just, uh, _passionately_ drove away.”

Robin laughed again, and, although she couldn’t see it, Steve broke into a lopsided grin. For the millionth time, he wished that she were still here in Hawkins so he could see her reaction in person, like how her nose would scrunch up or how her mouth would drop open and stay that way. Sure, he’d only just visited her last month and would be seeing her again on his trip to New York later this week, but it just wasn’t the same. Maybe in a few decades, they’d have transporters or holographic video phones like the ones found in any dime-a-dozen sci-fi movie, but, until then, a good old-fashioned telephone conversation would have to do. At the very least, auditory-only communication was better than Morse code, writing letters, or not being able to talk at all, so he conceded the point and counted his blessings.

It was Sunday evening, and Steve was flying around his kitchen preparing dinner as he chatted with Robin. They’d been busy and, thusly, hadn’t talked since Monday, which was highly unusual for them; they didn’t have a minimum quota or adhered to some fixed schedule, but their conversations were frequent enough that even a few days apart felt like a step back. Even if they couldn’t always shoot the shit, they were usually pretty good at quick check-ins, so much so that they hadn’t gone a full week without speaking in a very long time. It hadn’t always been like that: their steadfast habit of staying in touch had only started three years ago, when Robin had graduated journalism school at Indiana State and had moved to New York to become a writer—which, currently, she was busy doing. All day, she’d been cobbling together some op-ed article for _The New Yorker_ on her ThinkPad, and she’d sounded more than over it when she’d initially called him.

Steve was just as grateful for the distraction as she was, because he’d been beating himself up all weekend over Billy’s enduring radio silence. He’d been especially worried over the fact that he’d never given Billy his own number, something he’d only realized later that same night as he’d been in bed, unsuccessfully trying to sleep. Even if that did have any bearing on Billy’s delay, there was absolutely no way that he was going to call him up and give it to him now; in doing so, his impromptu call would probably just come across as a clingy, thinly veiled pressuring for an answer. Ultimately, he’d reasoned that Billy could just get it from the phone book—or, hey, Max—because, unlike him, he’d actually put roots down in Hawkins, thank you very much.

Still, more than anything else, he wanted—needed—to give Billy his space. So far, he was doing a good job at it, but his thoughts were slowly killing him, and he felt his finite patience wane with every passing hour. Just like with his sudden decision to enlighten Dustin, this quiet anguish is what ultimately led him to tell Robin everything, and, unlike Dustin, that meant _everything_. She was his other best friend, and he was already going to tell her at least what he’d told him, fair is fair, but the Billy aspect was so absurd and so removed from everything about her life that he just couldn’t resist spilling the beans. And, well, if it helped that he knew she’d get a kick out of it, which they both very much needed right now, then that was just a bonus.

“Incredible,” she murmured, still fixated on Billy’s unexpected reaction and subsequent hasty departure. “You managed to scare off a fucking cop with only your words. I’m impressed, doofus.”

Steve pressed his cordless phone into the crook of his shoulder so that he could use both hands to drain spaghetti through a colander. “Y’know, when you put it like that, it sounds a lot better than ‘local man asks asshole-slash-cop for his jizz, latter flees the state’ or something.”

He could hear Robin’s smirk through her tone. “Listen, I’m not the best judge on what constitutes ‘a cute boy’ and all that, but I gotta say, in my humble lesbian opinion, you really couldn’t do better. Yours and his baby would rule over us all. All hail Baby Harrington, eater of worlds and hoarder of hairspray.”

“Gee, thanks,” Steve deadpanned, but he almost chuckled in the process. “Glad to see my best buddies have so much confidence in my choices. And here I was, almost worried you wouldn’t approve of the guy I picked for my dastardly deed.”

“Dustin knows?”

“Dustin knows,” he confirmed. “But about wanting a baby, not about asking Billy. That’s a special secret, just for you. So, don’t go telling anyone else, and especially don’t write an article on it. I get _The New Yorker_ —even if you change the names, I’ll know.”

“Just until he knocks you up,” Robin harrumphed, seemingly irked at him for already thwarting her master plan to share it with the galaxy at large, “then can I tell everyone?”

“Listen, this works out, you can advertise it on billboards in every borough in New York City and personally make my parents cry from my poor choices.”

“Excellent,” she half-joked, mockingly sinister. “Speaking of which, how are they going to take it?”

Steve set the empty pan aside and switched off the burner, pulling himself up onto the kitchen counter and wiping a bead of sweat off his temple. Last night had been stormy but oddly cool, and he’d turned off his central air so he could listen to the rainfall and feel the breeze on his skin as he went to sleep; he still hadn’t turned it back on yet, even though the day had been muggy and considerably warm because of it. Maybe it was just because he naturally ran cold, but he didn’t mind a little extra heat if it meant fresh air, and that was something that he could only savor for the next few weeks before air conditioning became less of an option and more of a requirement. “Mom will probably be pretty excited, and, as for the company, she won’t mind as long as nothing interferes with the clients’ plans, which it won’t. Dad…eh, let’s just say the holidays are gonna be interesting. Either way, I’m not even going to bring it up until I’m up the duff—y’know, better to ask forgiveness than permission, can’t put the candy back in the wrapper, et cetera.”

He was telling the truth, although downplaying it a bit. His parents would be at two different stages for a while, namely meaning his mother would have to be the one to get his father on board with the idea of their son being single, unmarried, and suddenly pregnant. Steve had his issues with his father, ninety-nine percent of them stemming from the fact that he was a big-town alpha whose only child was a male omega; he’d never said anything about it, not really, but Steve still knew that he’d been a disappointment to his father since day one, and that’d only gotten more apparent the more that time had marched on. Still, theirs hadn’t always been such a rocky relationship—his childhood was not without memories of paternal affection—but then came that tricky little time called puberty, and their interactions had turned seldom and, of those, consistently miserable. It’d reached a climax with his abrupt exit from the firm, and that was when things got very, very bad between them; turned out, it didn’t matter if blood was thicker than water if that blood was just plain bad.

But that’d been several years ago at this point, and the geographical distance between them had somewhat helped to cool their tensions; he was marginally sure that his father would eventually come around to the idea—not to the fact that his son would be the one having a baby, god, no, but to the baby in question. When it came down to it, his father was nothing if not a shrewd businessman, and having a grandkid was just relatable enough that he could spin it to his advantage with relative ease.

“You’re gonna keep working?”

“Duh,” Steve said, rolling his eyes. “What, am I supposed to just sit around on my ass for nine months?”

“Not that, like, traveling and flying. You’re a regular Carmen Sandiego. Can pregnant people even go on airplanes?”

That was a good question, and the answer was possibly in one of those recently purchased parenting books that he had yet to crack open. “Dunno, probably not in the third trimester. Which, in that case, I’ll just stick around at the office for the last few months before my parental leave. But I don’t intend to stop traveling until I physically can’t.”

“You’re nuts for that,” she scoffed. “Then again, that’s coming from someone who doesn’t like flying but hates the idea of pregnancy even more. Here you are, wanting to juggle doing both at the same time—I might be smarter, but you’re definitely braver. No doubt about it.”

She was just joking, good-naturedly at that, but Steve couldn’t help but feel moved; he wrapped his free arm around himself and leaned his head against the side of the nearest wood grain cabinet. Not counting Dustin or Billy—when it came to the latter, right now, he tried not to—he’d only had himself to contend with for almost two weeks, and it was a relief to finally, openly talk with someone else about what’d been weighing so heavily on his mind.

“You there?” She sounded concerned now, and Steve really did miss her being here in Hawkins. Of all his close friends that lived out of state, he saw Dustin the most frequently due to his work headquarters being based in Chicago. Hell, even when Jonathan and Nancy were dancing between either ends of the United States, he’d had more opportunities to visit them than he now had to visit Robin; actually, he still did, because they’d grown unimpressed with the lacking quality of life in major cities (as well as how difficult it was to stretch a dollar), and they’d moved to Indianapolis late last year to start a family—something they’d apparently wasted no time in accomplishing.

“’M here,” Steve mumbled. “Just lost in thought.”

Robin clicked her tongue in a reassuring manner. “Aw, it’s gonna be okay. Mark my words, he’ll get his head out of his ass in no time. He’s always had a thing for you, he can’t say no.”

“A _thing_?” Spluttering, he jolted and smacked his temple against the cabinet. “ _Ouch_ —no, he hasn’t!”

She made a sound that fell somewhere between ‘don’t be stupid, yes, he did’ and ‘don’t be stupid, yes, he does’, and he just knew that she was rolling her eyes at him from hundreds of miles away. “Are you kidding me? God, I saw him more that summer than I did my own _parents_. You don’t think I remember him coming into Scoops all the time, lingering like a sex-crazed stalker, strolling up to the counter and trying his damnedest to get you all hot and bothered just because he could?”

“…No?”

“Listen, trust me—as a future godmother, I have a sense about these kinds of things. When she’s old enough for me to take her out for drinks, your daughter’s gonna love this story someday.”

Steve groaned. The side of his head was still throbbing, but he felt a headache coming on for another reason entirely. “God, I’m not even pregnant yet, and, here you are, already making plans to get my hypothetical child drunk. Besides, for all you know, it could be a boy.” He thought over the first part of what she said and suddenly remembered a certain someone’s own burning desire to be godparent numero uno. “Heads up, Dustin’s planning on fighting you for that title.”

“He can certainly try, but he won’t succeed. And don’t play dumb with me—it’s so gonna be a girl. With how bad you used to be around them, it’d be cosmic fate for you to have to raise one.”

“I hate that you’re probably right.”

They kept chatting as Steve got down from the counter, took his food to the table, and ate buttered, cheesy spaghetti with a scant glass of pinot grigio, taking care to savor it because he knew he was going to have to give up drinking and his mediocre eating habits sooner rather than later. So far, the incoming lifestyle changes were what he was most dreading, because while he didn’t usually drink heavily or eat _too_ poorly, it still wasn’t going to be an easy transition. Speaking of which, those unopened prenatal vitamins that he was supposed to start taking ahead of time were still glaring at him from their isolated spot on the counter, and he pointedly avoided making eye contact as he took another gratifying sip of wine.

At some point, Robin was describing what haircut she was planning to get soon—blonde highlights with lots of layers, in no small part inspired by her burning crush on Rachel from _Friends_ —when Steve randomly thought of something and cut in.

“Wait, you never told me what you’re wearing.”

“What the hell, did this just turn into a sex line?” But she was snickering as she said it. “Hey, now there’s one job that doesn’t care if you’re heavily pregnant. You should look into that.”

“ _Hey, sexy_ ,” Steve mimicked a husky, coquettish voice that would put Pamela Anderson to shame, and it made Robin burst into laughter all over again. “But, seriously, you always describe your outfits to me whether I like it or not, and I’m up for anything that’ll keep me from being left alone with my thoughts. Plus, I can’t exactly ask for Polaroids, can I?”

“Uh, yeah, you can,” she replied. “You just did. But the real question is, how would I explain that to Heather?”

Heather, of course, was her girlfriend. They’d only been officially dating for coming up on two years, but they’d been suspiciously close friends ever since meeting at the Hawkins Community Pool; coincidentally, it’d been during that same summer that Heather had been a lifeguard there with none other than Billy Hargrove. Steve would’ve found it laughable that so many of his friends had eventually ended up with the same people that they’d been dating (or, at least, eyeing) since they were all in middle or high school, but, on second thought, he wasn’t exactly one to judge: here he was, hoping to get a baby from his demented high school bully, for Christ’s sake. He was just as guilty as they were, scratch that, more so.

Shaking himself from his thoughts, he hummed into the receiver. “Tell her you’re sorry, but that our passionate love affair can’t be stopped.”

“Right, right. She’s gonna be so devastated, but, oh well, the heart wants what it wants.” A knife could cut the sarcasm, it was so thick. “Ha, okay, well, right now, it’s just my roommate’s CUNY t-shirt and some sweatpants, ’cause I apparently really need to do laundry. My socks, though, are the ones with hearts on them that Heather got me for Valentine’s Day. Also, just because we probably won’t get to talk after tonight for a few days _and_ because you apparently love fashion so much, I’ll do tomorrow’s outfit, too. So, I was thinking that brick-red blazer, the one I got last week at some vintage shop in Queens that matches my new M·A·C lipstick…”

That tided her over until Steve could load the dishwasher and head upstairs to start unwinding before bed. He normally wasn’t a big talker on the phone, much more preferred to do it in person, but he never minded the hours drifting away with Robin on the other end. It reminded him of when they were teenagers dicking around at Scoops Ahoy, to the extent that it was as if they were purposefully trying to get fired—which, they had, but that wasn’t the point. It’d been a shitty, demeaning job, but he wouldn’t trade the memories for anything; it’d built character and had given him one of his lifelong best friends. Not too shabby.

Robin was in the middle of complaining about her upcoming commissioned puff piece about the incumbent mayor of New York (“Giuliani’s a rat bastard, Steve, and I feel bad for the rats in that analogy,”) when a buzz on the other end indicated that someone else was trying to call him.

“Lemme call you right back,” he promised her. “It’s probably just my mom needing some reassurance about that Steve Hanks portraiture that’s going on sale tomorrow. The bid’s gone up by another two grand, and she’s been a wreck over it.”

“Or maybe it’s _him_ ,” she said devilishly, and he pretended not to notice his stomach swooping in response.

Right before she hung up, he heard her say something indecipherable to someone else in the room, probably Heather, and there was no doubt in his mind that she was already spilling his secrets to anyone that would listen. Shaking his head, he pressed the call button again, all while completely expecting his mother and nobody else. Which, of course, led to his downfall. “What’s up?”

“Harrington.”

 _Fuck_ , he hated it when Robin was right. What, was she some sapphic witch and had conveniently forgotten to tell him about her psychic powers in the decade that they’d known each other? He made a mental note to confront her about it later, even though he already knew what her answer would be: _duh, took you long enough._

“Uh—uh, yeah, I’m here.” More specifically, he was next to the open French windows in his bedroom, the nighttime air balmy and stagnant; where the scene had been pleasant only mere seconds ago, he was now shivering from the sudden ice trickling in his veins. Billy wouldn’t dare do this over the phone, would he?

_Billy dared to do a lot of things. Of course he would._

“You never gave me your number.”

Steve had to swallow the nervous laughter bubbling up in his throat, because that blunder had been on them both—sure, he’d forgotten, but Billy had fled the scene before giving him a chance to get around to it. The actual guilty party hardly mattered now that there were more pressing matters at hand. “Seems like you got it anyways. Max?”

“Max.”

 _Go figure._ Right now, she was probably at home shaking her head at having to act as a mediator between two grown men, what with their shared failure to communicate properly, and he wouldn’t blame her for it.

His newfound jitters were suddenly making his legs feel like jelly, so Steve turned away from the window sill and almost stumbled over his feet in the process; crossing the room, he sagged onto the edge of his bed and scrubbed a hand over his forehead. If this was going to happen now, he wanted to be at least physically prepared for it. “Okay,” he sighed. “I’m ready. Go ahead.”

Billy’s surprise was evident in the way that he barked out, “What?”

“You’re going to tell me that you’re not going to do it, so let’s just get it over with. No hard feelings.”

He immediately, loudly huffed at him; Steve, still motionless, couldn’t suppress a twitch of his brow at the sound of it. _What did that mean?_

“That’s not what I called about.”

_The fuck?_

“Then why are you calling?” Steve asked, and he frowned at himself when he realized that that came off ruder than he intended. “I mean, what else is there to discuss?”

Billy seemed at a loss for words, which was completely, utterly unlike him; this was the same person that used to swagger around the locker room with his dick practically in hand, daring anyone to look down at it. The same person that did keg stands at Halloween parties and howled to the heavens afterwards. The same person that, once upon a time, had cackled with blood dripping down his nose before smashing a plate over Steve’s head. Now, they were sitting in silence over the phone all because Steve had made him go completely tongue-tied. It didn’t feel real, and he didn’t think it ever really would.

“Can… _fuck_ , can we just…start over? For the time being?”

Compared to what Steve had expected to hear, anything outside of a definitive answer didn’t take much to confuse him. He blew air from between his lips and lay spread-eagled on his bed, flinging all his limbs out except for the hand holding the phone against the shell of his ear. “Start over?” He repeated, flummoxed. “I don’t understand.”

Billy was getting more frustrated with his inability to convey his intent properly, or, maybe, he was just getting progressively irritated at Steve. He couldn’t exactly tell, not without seeing Billy’s face.

_Transporters…holographic video phones…_

“What I mean, is,” Billy spoke through gritted teeth, as if it were physically painful to draw the words forth. “Can we at least clear the air between us before getting into _that_? Unless she lied to me, Max mentioned you wanted to catch up.”

At the time, a drunken Steve had only told her that to cover his ass, but it was true that they hadn’t left things in a good—or even decent—place; the years apart had long since snuffed out whatever weird little frenemy affiliation that they’d initially garnered, not that it’d been missed.

“I did,” Steve slowly agreed. He tried to sound more assured than he actually felt, but it was a fruitless pursuit.

“Do you still?”

That was a tricky question. On one hand, Steve wasn’t opposed to the idea as long as he wasn’t; on the other, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would mean in the long run. As it stood, things could only go one of two ways: with Billy working up the nerve to say yes or with Steve getting the rug pulled out from under him. He didn’t know the odds, but logic told him they weren’t fifty-fifty.

Still, if things did progress, it would get permanently heavy and incomprehensibly weird between them, so this would be their last chance to—for lack of a better phrase—kiss and make up. Truthfully, having the opportunity to talk things out, mano-a-mano, wouldn’t be a bad thing; Billy clearly needed more time to make up his mind, and, maybe, Steve could find a way to convince him in the process—or, at the very least, figure out which direction he was currently leaning and go from there. Ultimately, as long as Billy’s involvement was still on the table, he supposed that he could play along. _It can’t hurt, right?_

“I guess I do.”

“Then let’s catch up,” Billy said brusquely, confidence buoyed by Steve’s cautious agreement. “Like normal adults. And, eventually, I’ll give you my answer.”

Steve nodded, only to promptly realize that Billy couldn’t see the motion through the call. “Okay,” he stated, taking care to sound as casual as possible. “But…can I ask something first?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you—and don’t think I’m rushing you, ’cause I’m not, but do you have a time frame of, like, when you’ll know? How much longer are you even in Hawkins for?”

“My luck, the rest of the year.” And then, so clearly conflicted that he sounded almost completely like someone else, “I don’t know. I just need more time.”

It was an odd thing to think that, by the very end of the year, Steve could be tentatively a third or maybe even halfway through his pregnancy, and Billy would be back in The Golden State as if nothing of the sort had ever happened, perhaps never to return. But December was far off, meaning Billy probably wasn’t going anywhere for six months, and, as impatient as he felt, there was simply no need for urgency. It wasn’t like he cared about potential due dates or if he’d be showing by his parents’ Christmas soirée this year; he simply wanted to get pregnant as soon as possible so that it would be over as soon as possible, and every month that he put it off just meant more time that he had wait to overcome the grueling physical changes. But the main takeaway here was that they had plenty of time, so he would give Billy as much as he needed, even if that meant waiting until the very last second. _We have time._

“Okay,” Steve repeated. “I get it. That’s fine by me.”

Billy made a noncommittal sound, one that was just shy of sounding approving. “Good. Then meet me for lunch tomorrow at the diner off Mulberry Street. Dunno ’bout you, but I’ve got the day off.” He paused. “Do you even work?”

The fact that their situation was so topsy-turvy that he even had to ask something like that made Steve snort, even though it really wasn’t that funny. “Yeah, I work. I can do dinner instead.” Struck by a certain realization, he went back to being serious just as suddenly. “Er, this kinda sounds like a date.”

“It’s not,” Billy said firmly, tone not brooking an argument, and Steve had to wonder if he was going out of his way to convince him or himself. But he didn’t think too much of it, because his head was still buzzing over the fact that Billy hadn’t called to turn him down, that he was still actively considering it, and that he was making an attempt to right some past wrongs in the process. “We’ve just wasted enough time, might as well not waste any more.”

“Cheers to that,” Steve agreed, not knowing what even compelled him to say something so stupid. For some reason, their conversations inevitably found him either embarrassing himself or insulting Billy in the process, and, if he wanted this whole reconnection process to go smoothly tomorrow night, he would have to quash those bad habits as soon as possible.

“Then tomorrow, seven again. Don’t be late this time.” He hung up on Steve’s protests, because he wasn’t late last time, _asshole, you were just obscenely early._

Steve remained in place for a few minutes, spread out on his bed like a starfish and finding it hard to believe what’d just occurred. All great minds must think alike, because the cordless phone in his hand rang at the very same second that he started getting the urge to discuss it with Robin; he answered it, lighting fast, after only one ring.

“ _Finally_ ,” she groaned, impatient as ever. “I know that wasn’t your mother, ’cause it went on too long. I know it deep in my bones. Spill, Steven.”

“How _do_ you do that?” He marveled, nearly rolling his eyes into his skull, but he did exactly as she said without a moment’s hesitation. She at least was courteous enough to let him express all the details before commenting on it, and, considering her track record, that must’ve been incredibly difficult. He’d have to mail her a gold star for her efforts.

“Oh god,” she cooed. “It’s all coming together, just like I said! He wants to take you out on a date or two—it is so, shut up—before getting you pregnant. And they say chivalry is dead, hot damn.”

“Y’know, this is my life, not some soap opera.”

“No,” she declared. “It’s better. When this all goes down, I expect completely accurate play-by-plays, no joke. And, yes, that includes mature themes not suited for children.” In a snap, she affected a pleading tone that wouldn’t fool anyone, much less someone who could see through her as well as Steve. “If I swear her to secrecy, can Heather please listen in next time?”

“Like you already didn’t tell her everything. _Ugh._ Fine.”

Their phone bills were probably going to be astronomical, but what else was new.


	3. Chapter 3

_June 12, 1995_

At seven-fifteen, unsurprisingly, Harrington was late.

Billy, sitting in a cracked leatherette booth with his hands wrapped around a chipped coffee mug, felt himself grow more impatient with each second that ticked by. He’d been at the diner since six-forty, twenty minutes earlier than they’d agreed upon, despite knowing beforehand that there was virtually no chance of him beating him there. He wasn’t surprised at Steve Harrington being the sort of person that ran on their own internal clock, but he had to wonder if his apparently piss-poor timing was symptomatic of his rich upbringing or if it just happened to be his own fatal flaw. At the very least, he could tell that Steve hadn’t gone through rigorous enforcement training, because Billy had, and it’d permanently curb stomped all his previously unpunctual tendencies. He wasn’t even sure if the phrase ‘fashionably late’ still existed in his vocabulary.

Over the past thirty-five minutes and counting, he’d been alone with his thoughts—to be more specific, an ad nauseam loop of _baby, Steve, baby, father, Steve, father, baby_ that’d been eating him alive since Friday night. It’d gotten to the point that a debilitating headache had lodged itself in the forefront of his skull, making everything feel fuzzy like television static; between that and his rising anxiety, he’d gotten no closer to deciding what he was going to do. If he were an optimistic man, he would’ve had some misguided hope that it would help talking with the very same person who’d started all of this, but he wasn’t, and he also wasn’t nearly foolish enough to think that one random dinner would solve anything of the sort.

Looking back on it all, when he’d left Los Angeles in early January, he hadn’t expected his time back in Shithole, USA to turn out like this—or, for that matter, to last nearly as long. Exactly this time last year, he’d been blissfully enjoying his own life, the one that he’d carved out for himself, even with all the stress and frustration that went along with protecting and serving an increasingly crime-ridden, expensive, and smoggy coastal city. He’d never once considered returning to Hawkins, not for a single second, and that wouldn’t have changed if he’d had his way, but then life had intervened. Six months ago, at two-thirty in the morning on the twenty-third of December, he’d woken up to a phone call from a hospital on the other side of the country, and it’d turned his entire world upside down.

Neil Hargrove, his estranged so-called ‘father’, had supposedly been in a horrific head-on car crash earlier that evening, one so bad that it’d instantly killed the other driver and his wife. To this day, Billy didn’t know if his dad was at fault or not; if any of the state highway patrol had any clue, which he still suspected they did, they’d kept him in the dark. It was probably selfish, but he was glad for it: he didn’t want nor need to bear that guilt on his father’s behalf. Neil had caused him more than enough pain for one lifetime, and Billy had the metaphorical and physical scars to prove it.

“You’re the only emergency contact we could get hold of,” a brash nurse had informed him, although his heartbeat, pounding in his ears like a Gatling gun, had muffled her words. He’d tried to think of his emergency response training to calm his erratic breathing, but he’d never prepared to be on the other end of that next-of-kin call. “I’m not going to lie, he’s in critical shape and might not pull through, but we’re doing the best we can. Until you can get here, can you think of anyone that you could arrange to come in your stead?”

He couldn’t, not even on a good day. Max, who still lived there, rightfully had nothing to do with that prick, and Billy wouldn’t dream of asking her to; it was his asshole dad to deal with, not hers. Susan, Max’s mom and his ex-stepmother, had packed her bags and filed divorce papers back in 1989, so she wouldn’t be an option. As for Neil’s few still-living blood relatives, they were geographically closer to Billy than not.

The call had ended without resolution, just a vague promise to make arrangements as soon as possible, and it went without saying that the incident had left him unable to go back to sleep. So, he’d sat up in bed with his bare back pressed to the wall, lit up a smoke with trembling fingers, and had mulled over the facts at hand. It’d only taken him about half a cigarette to come to the realization of what needed to be done, but he’d needed one-and-a-half more before he’d been able to build up the courage to admit it to himself, because he’d truly, deeply despised the concept of heading back to Indiana to attend to his good-for-nothing father’s affairs. When he’d had his own life-threatening accident a few years ago, Neil hadn’t said a single thing, and he certainly hadn’t dropped everything to come to California so he could be his son’s power of attorney—not that Billy would’ve wanted him there, but the point still stood. He had no clue as to why he’d felt compelled to personally deal with his dad’s mess; they were related by blood, but they weren’t family, not how it counted.

But, then again, he’d known deep down that Neil was the only father that he’d ever have, and, despite being a bad one, nothing could’ve changed that. Maybe it’d been the dark, lonely hours of the night that’d ultimately swayed his decision, or maybe it’d been the fact that it was the most benevolent time of the year, or maybe it’d been the ghost of his mother’s voice in the back of his head, something that the passage of time had never fully been able to shake, reminding him to have compassion; hell, maybe it’d been all of the above. Whatever the reason, in the end, he’d realized that he would’ve resented himself for the rest of his life if he’d let this opportunity to get closure pass him by. It’d been a very bitter pill, yet one that he still had to swallow, and that’d been that.

So, he’d begrudgingly handed in his extended leave of absence, because he’d had a hunch that things would take longer than the vacation time that he’d accrued—a prospect that, although astute, had nonetheless scared him shitless. Christmas Day had found him packing up boxes instead of unwrapping them; by New Years’ Eve, on the cusp of a new year and an unwanted fresh start, those same boxes had been sent through the mail to await him at Neil’s newly empty house. Once he’d booked a one-way flight to Indianapolis and had put his car into storage, that simply left saying goodbye to a place that he didn’t want to leave, getting on an airplane for the first time in his life, and returning to Indiana after nearly a decade away.

Up to that point, he’d treated his impromptu homecoming as the inconvenience that it was, but, upon returning to Hawkins just six days into 1995—exactly two weeks after his dad’s accident—any doubts about the seriousness of the matter vanished as soon as he’d seen him in the flesh. Neil was in a coma, his brain irreparably damaged from severe trauma, or so they said; if he ever woke up, which was already unlikely, he would never be the same again. It’d sounded unreal that, in a snap, such a cruel, ugly man could just vanish but still be here physically, but that’s exactly what’d happened. As he’d looked down at the pitiful shell that his father had become in the years they’d been (thankfully) apart, comatose and bruised and battered and his head all kinds of fucked up where they’d had to go in and reduce the swelling with a craniotomy, Billy had felt a level of pity—not for the abusive man that he’d once both feared and hated, but for the half-alive human being plainly suffering in front of him.

It was an empathetic mindset that he’d never had about Neil before, but a little growing up on his own over the years had evidently done him good, had sloughed off his rougher edges, and he could attribute most of those changes back to that fated day when he’d nearly lost his own life but miraculously hadn’t. Traumatic as it was, almost dying had had a funny way of shifting his outlook on nearly everything, including his ability to forgive.

Still, he might’ve come out on the other side with a calmer disposition than previously thought possible, but that didn’t mean he was perfect or even ‘fixed’: he had his vices, very little patience for ineptitude, and got unspeakably angry from time-to-time—a nasty leftover trait from his childhood abuse, from his mom’s abandonment, from how unfair life could frequently be—but, since he’d started going to therapy a few years ago, those ugly moments had lessened considerably. Making a habit of frequent exercise, meditation, and going to Mass helped, too, especially once he’d gone off the pain pills and needed more outlets than ever to avoid succumbing to the latent rage and pain and hurt.

While all of those in conjunction had so far been sufficient for dealing with his own issues, there weren’t enough therapists, trainers, or preachers in the world that could help him deal with his conflicting emotions about his ailing father or the prospect of fathering Steve Harrington’s baby—yes, _that_ Harrington, who somehow still lived in Hawkins and looked indistinguishable from his feverish high school memories, which was disorienting, to say the least. No, unfortunately, he would just have to weather this shitstorm himself.

Billy drained another cup of mud and scrubbed a hand over his unshaven face. Typically, he took it black and as strong as possible, but he’d begrudgingly gone for decaf this time; he hated it purely based on principle, but he just didn’t see the point in being wired all night if he wasn’t working a shift. He wanted to blame Hopper, who’d all but strong-armed him into taking an extra day off, saying that he’d been on edge lately and more than needed a good night’s rest, but it wasn’t his fault that Billy’s brain seemed to have forgotten how to properly shut itself down. Even after months of staying at his father’s house and sleeping in his old bedroom, a place that was visibly bare but filled to the brim with bad memories, it’d only recently started to take its toll, for every night was quickly becoming a nightmare of jumbled thoughts, fears, and traumas. Sometimes, actual nightmares made him gasp awake in a cold sweat and clasp his hands to the white, circular scars on his chest and belly, always expecting to feel shredded skin gushing blood.

Those nights were the worst.

Like clockwork, a waitress wearing a teal dress uniform came up to his table; she didn’t say anything as she poured fresh coffee into his mug, just smiled without teeth when he muttered his thanks. Her extraordinarily responsive timing wasn’t a coincidence, because she’d been very conspicuously lingering in the vicinity of his table, perhaps waiting for such an opportunity to strike. He had to wonder what about him specifically kept her in his orbit— _what, is it the looks? The holster on my hip? Both?—_ and sheer curiosity made him glance up at her through his eyelashes. She was a sweet young thing, pretty but approachable, her cheeks flushed from a heavy-handed application of blush and her bleach-blonde hair scraped back into a messy chignon, and probably around Max’s age if he had to hazard a guess; at some point in his life, when he’d still been interested in playing the part of an unrepentant ladies’ man, he would’ve literally charmed the panties off her. But, now, he was too tired, and it was in a way that didn’t have anything to do with his ongoing sleep deprivation. It’d been years since he’d bothered forcing himself to be into things that he wasn’t, and what he was into certainly wasn’t her.

_Those big, bottomless brown eyes—_

At the very sudden and unwelcome mental image, Billy just bit the inside of his lip, but he nearly drew blood when the image materialized into something else just as quickly.

_—on a chubby-cheeked, toothless infant._

He might not have been interested in schmoozing the waitress, but that didn’t mean he wanted to look vulnerable in front of her, either. Billy waited until she’d swept away before pressing his knuckles into his closed eyes, causing a wash of phosphenes to erupt like a flare in the dark. He focused on silencing his brain and watching the display of his own creation, the multicolored stars in a tapestry of black, and he stayed that way even long after the static had fizzled out.

“Bad time?”

His head snapped up.

There was Steve, smiling uneasily at him, standing right next to the table with a dripping wet windbreaker on his arm. It was tempestuous again today, but that was to be expected; it was that time of the year where daylong summer storms would suddenly pop up with a vengeance, only for the following day to boast blue skies and sunshine as if no adverse weather had ever happened. Mother Nature and her mood swings, naturally.

“No,” he managed, blinking at the sudden influx of light and gesturing with an outstretched hand to the booth seat across from his own. “But you’re late.”

Steve groaned, a gesture that felt entirely too familiar for their nonexistent rapport. He threw his windbreaker onto the seat beside the window and sat down in a huff. “Traffic, man. People don’t know how to drive in bad weather, and they hydroplane like freakin’ idiots all over the road.”

Under the bright, unflattering overhead lighting of a crummy small-town diner, Billy looked him over and, again, found himself bemused at how little Steve had changed since high school. He still carried himself well, still wore stupidly affluent attire like off-white wool sweaters, navy khakis, and spotless loafers without socks—although, now, there was a watch on his wrist that probably, definitely cost more than several months of Billy’s rent back home. Most importantly, he still had that impressive mane of hair: it was long in the front yet a little shorter around his ears and neck, and those longer strands were swooped further over to the side so that they could be tucked out of the way; he’d only been here a minute and had already used his fingers twice to push back some pieces falling out of place.

Apart from a few extra horizontal expression lines on his forehead and looking a little too lean for his taller frame, he seemed to have handled the passing years with aplomb—unlike some people. There was no haunted look in his eye or bullet fragments still scattered inside of his chest cavity, no smell of blood stuck in his nose, no long nights spent trying and failing to keep his shit together, and Billy was glad to see it. A dark part of him recognized that, unlike Steve, he alone deserved all the shitty things that life handed him, if only to achieve some form of penitence for all the pain he’d caused others when he’d been unable to handle his own. It was a very good thing that Steve had so clearly and effortlessly come out on top, as much as it was a testament to Billy’s extensive foray into self-improvement that he felt no resentment towards him for it, only satisfaction.

“Don’t really have to worry about that back home,” Billy bit out, not willing to drop the menial subject of the weather, because that could lead to addressing the elephant in the room. Steve thumbed at a corner of a paper menu with daily specials, but he didn’t tear his eyes from him. “It rains sometimes, and the traffic always fuckin’ sucks, but it’s not often that it gets bad enough where people are careening off the road.”

“Must be nice,” Steve gave a polite but tiny nod. “You should see it when it’s icy out. I don’t know if you remember, but winters are pretty shitty here.”

Unable to stop himself, Billy snorted. “I remember. It’s the entire reason why I’ve refused to return for so long.”

Steve quirked an eyebrow and slightly pursed his lips, visibly stopping himself from challenging Billy over _that_ being the only reason. Billy saw it, waited for it, because the Steve that he’d known had never been tactful, but the words surprisingly never came; instead, he just demurely flicked his eyes down to the menu, and they lapsed into a momentarily anxious silence.

It only took some double-digit seconds for the blonde waitress to return, now with a notepad in hand. She took no time turning her doe eyes onto the newcomer at the table, and Billy’s law enforcement-based observational skills caught her split-second appraisal: how she scanned Steve’s hair, face, body, how she recognized his obvious wealth. But, for some reason, there was nothing there to keep her perpetual interest, which was all but confirmed when she briefly looked over at Billy with a flash of too-rapt attention. To further test his theory—and because he could—he threw her a sly smile and a tiny wink, and she instantly went red, even under all that blush.

Guess it wasn’t his gun that interested her, after all.

“W-what, uh, can I get you two?”

“Still deciding,” he told her smoothly, suddenly galvanized by Steve’s presence into showing off a little of his considerable charm. With his eyes still trained on her, Billy gestured in his direction with a flex of his fingers. “Maybe you want to go first?”

“I don’t care,” Steve’s exhale was a cross between a sigh and a yawn. If he’d noticed the waitress’s considerable flush or Billy’s experimental flirtation, he didn’t immediately show it. “How about…just toast and eggs, no bacon. Any way’s fine by me.”

The waitress furiously nodded, scribbling his order down with a pencil that she’d kept tucked behind her ear. “Um, what would you like to drink?”

“Regular coffee. Cream, no sugar.” After a second, he added an unprompted, “Thanks.”

Billy wasn’t sure if she’d even heard Steve, because her attention had already snapped back to him, blatantly hanging on to his every word with bated breath.

“Same, but keep the bacon,” Billy shrugged, using the crease between his index and middle finger to hand his menu back to her. He knew that he had to eat something, but he was too preoccupied with what was coming to bother feeling hungry; after taking one sideways glance at him, he had a hunch that Steve felt similarly. “And keep them refills on the black decaf coming, doll.”

Face still bright red, she gave a fake cough that sounded suspiciously like a giggle. From across the table, this time, Steve squinted slightly and frowned a little deeper. Wordlessly, he handed her his own menu and, as soon as she’d scooted off to the kitchen to place their orders, leaned back against the booth seat and crossed his arms. “So, _that_ hasn’t changed, huh?”

On the contrary, it very much had, but Billy didn’t mind pulling his leg if he stuck it out. “What do you mean?” He kept his face impassive, almost masterfully feigning ignorance, and the effort earned him an eye roll for his troubles.

“You’re a bad liar,” Steve shook his head. “But that’s okay. We all have to be bad at something, guess that one’s yours.”

Inwardly amused, Billy tilted his chin up and shifted his tongue around the inside corners of his mouth. “And you? What’re you bad at?”

Steve just fixed him with a searching look, bordering on annoyed, as if it were inherently obvious. “ _This_ , for one.”

There were multiple layers to that answer, each with a less savory meaning than the last, and Billy’s headache worsened at the prospect of unpacking them one-by-one. He pushed his mug out of the way so he could place his elbows on the table and lean in to counteract how Steve had leaned away. “Ask me something.”

Steve’s eyes went wide and unblinking, pupils darting over every inch of him. Strangely, he felt exposed by it, which wasn’t a sentiment that he was used to; it being his day off as well as so shitty outside, he hadn’t washed his hair or put product in it or been bothered to wear something more fitted instead of a rumpled long-sleeve shirt, and he now wished he’d done all of the above. But Steve didn’t look judgmental when it came to his unkempt appearance, quite the contrary—he was staring at Billy as if he’d never seen the real him before. _All things considered, he sorta hasn’t_ , Billy thought sourly, almost guiltily. _I sure as fuck made sure of that back in the day._

“Like…what?”

“Anything.” But he held up a finger a millisecond later, before Steve could get any funny ideas. “Just nothing about you-know-what, not yet, at least.”

Steve turned his head to stare out of the murky window at the gray skies, the far-off trees and shrubs swaying from the blustery wind, the flooding in the center of the parking lot from the ongoing downpour of rain. He didn’t say anything for a few good minutes, clearly weighing his options, and Billy didn’t pressure him, just looped his hands around the handle of his ceramic mug and waited. It took until after the waitress had dropped by with his own coffee and a handful of individual cups of creamer for him to finally start, although he kept his eyes downcast as he did so. “Max said you were here for your sick dad.”

He could answer this. He’d expected it. It’d been a long time since the mere offhand mention of either of his parents sent him spiraling into an inconsolable rage; besides, the not-so-subtle hint of burning curiosity written on Steve’s face was bait that he just couldn’t resist.

“Yeah,” Billy said simply, taking another sip of his steaming coffee and watching Steve busy himself with opening and pouring creamer after creamer into his own mug. “Car crash, here, last Christmas. He was supposed to be dead before New Year’s, but, somehow, he pulled through. Was in an induced coma until March. No idea how he lived. Not that it matters much, ’cause he’ll be in some home until he eventually kicks it.”

Billy’s voice, casual yet aloof, sounded foreign to his own ears, and it felt like he was talking about sports scores or local news rather than his father’s irreversible brain damage. Steve was still dutifully looking down at his makeshift chemistry project, but a pinched look had appeared between his eyebrows, and he’d gone quiet again; Billy didn’t need to be able to read minds to know that Steve was trying to think of a way to address the obvious lack of emotion. He braced himself for more questions about his father, specifically about their fucked up and broken relationship, but Steve just broke the paper ring on a set of clean silverware, took out a spoon, and started stirring his concoction until the swirls turned from black to beige. It was still steaming too much for him to attempt to drink it yet—a foreign concept to Billy, who just kept guzzling it down and rubbing his scalded tongue on the roof of his mouth afterwards; at one point, he almost swore he could feel it still boiling in the pit of his stomach.

“I know this sounds rude,” Steve said slowly, making Billy preemptively bristle from those dangerous words. “But…if he’s not going to get any better, if he’s such a lost cause, why are you still here? Why not just return to California early?”

Billy exhaled. He would be lying if he said those same questions didn’t cross his mind all the damn time, but, unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever was.

“That’s the thing,” he shook his head and lifted his eyes to the splotchy tiled ceiling. “He is and isn’t. I swear to fuckin’ god, I’ve come _this_ close to booking a return ticket more than once, and then he goes and does something he shouldn’t physically be able to do, like raise his hand or press a fuckin’ button.” He huffed before he took a new breath. “However, somebody’s gotta be here to deal with all the insurance bullshit, liquidate his possessions, sell his place to cover his medical debts, et cetera, and there’s nobody else but me. But, even if I didn’t give a shit about any of that, which I don’t, I’d still be here as a favor to Jim.”

“Jim?” Steve looked up in confusion, instantly pausing his meditative stirring. But then he caught himself, tilting his head in acknowledgement, before Billy could say another word. “Oh, right, _Hopper_.”

He sneered at him. “Is there anyone else named Jim that I should know about?”

“I don’t call him that,” Steve said defensively, and he resumed his absentminded task. “Only Joyce does. For the rest of us, it’s been either ‘Hop’ or ‘Chief’ for years.”

Grunting, Billy gestured upwards with his palms for a brief second. _Well, there you go. Another exception to the rule._

“Y’know,” Steve continued, sounding almost faraway now. “Max mentioned you’ve been working with him, but I still can’t believe it. You’ve been here for _six_ months, right under our noses, and no one’s said anything about seeing you around town.” Now, it was his turn to shake his head in disbelief. “I mean, one of us stops by the station at least once a week, namely Jane or Joyce, you’d think someone would’ve mentioned seeing Billy fucking Hargrove there.”

“You’d think,” Billy said wryly, getting a disgusting amount of satisfaction from hearing his name come out of Steve’s mouth like that. Out of the corner of his eye, the sky flashed a dim purple, and he waited for the corresponding muffled crackle of thunder. “Don’t overthink it. When I’m in uniform with _this_ ,” he pointed to his messy but still sharp-looking haircut and found Steve’s eyes already lingering there, “you’d be surprised who doesn’t notice me. Just last week, I saw that useless idiot from school who always followed me around and kissed my ass—Timmy? Tommy? Whatever, point is, slapped what’s-his-name with a ticket for speeding in a school zone, and he didn’t even blink twice.”

And, because life wasn’t fun without poking at someone’s buttons, even just a little bit, he switched tactics and smirked at Steve. “Besides, who said other people didn’t already know I was here?”

“…What?”

It was significantly less enjoyable if he had to spell it out for him.

“Max and I kept in touch,” he explained, nonchalantly drumming his fingers on the edge of the table. “But you already knew that. She introduced me to Jim, who introduced me to Joyce. I’ve had dinner at their place several times, only because neither of ’em takes no for answer. Anyways, whenever that happens, Jane comes over and her pipsqueak boyfriend usually tags along. Max, too, once or twice. What I’m trying to say is that several members of your so-called gang know I’m here, and we’re all pretty well acquainted at this point. Hell, excluding that Wheeler kid, I’m probably better friends with them than you are.”

“Hey, watch it,” Steve set his wet spoon on a napkin so he could cross a hand over his heart in mock hurt. His surprise was genuine, though, and his next words dripped in derision because of it. “Seriously? Well, that’s just _great_. How very convenient of the others to keep you as their dirty little secret. Egg on my face.”

That was just the thing—Steve might not have noticed Billy over the last few months, but he couldn’t say the same in return. Back in early February, once he’d dealt with his father’s immediate medical affairs and had gotten accustomed as possible to being back in Hawkins again, he’d desperately needed something to fill his endless time with; doing nothing, like putzing around in the hospital or ruminating on shitty memories in his old house, was very quickly making him lose his mind. So, on a very pushy recommendation from Max, he’d ended up going to the Hawkins Police Station in search of anything to do, even if that meant filling out paperwork or filing reports, as long as it meant getting pointed in the right direction of where a stranded fellow cop could go from here.

But it’d seemed that his reputation had preceded him more than he could’ve guessed, and things had started off on a frosty note when a disgruntled Hopper had unceremoniously started questioning his intentions. In just a few short words, he’d made it very clear that he still remembered how, not altogether too long ago, Billy used to be an indirect thorn in his side by being an abject terror to the kids. Facing his checkered past without warning had made Billy grit his teeth, but, miraculously, he’d stayed levelheaded—the only option left was to kowtow and apologize for his past actions as sincerely as possible, giving no excuses or half-truths in the process.

It’d been a gamble that’d, somehow, paid off: Hopper’s immediate reaction had been a mixture of surprise and muted approval, and his tone had changed from accusatory to inquisitive, suddenly intent on knowing everything that Billy had done since he’d been a stupid teenager. Just as with his apology, he’d held nothing back, openly confessing as to why he was in Hawkins again without actually wanting to be; by the time that they’d gotten around to the tricky topic of his accident five years ago, Hopper’s initially cool demeanor had warmed considerably. Turned out, there was always a shortage of competent cops around these parts, especially ones that were willing to take care of undesirable family members at the expense of their own careers or ones that would sacrifice their lives in the line of fire, and Billy had walked out of Hopper’s office with an actual job that was only as temporary as he so wished. And, a few days after that, a decommissioned police truck to boot, only because Hopper had audibly scoffed when he’d heard that he was still planning to use his ongoing car rental for the next few months.

It’d been good to have a purpose again, even better to have a reason to get out of the house, and the following weeks spent transitioning to his life as a small-town cop had gone more smoothly than imaginable. That is, until one snowy morning not even two months after he’d returned, when he’d caught sight of a pristine older model Beemer in the nearly empty station parking lot. When he’d realized why it’d looked so familiar, scabbed-over guilt and a flood of memories, some good but mostly bad, had hit him like a rush of blood to the head. The very real excuse of the bitter cold had made it easy to justify staying in his warm truck a little longer, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d been compelled to wait and see if his suspicions were true before he could go in and start his shift. He’d attributed his hesitation to curiosity, not cowardice—watching events unfold from afar _was_ already in his repertoire—and had almost managed to convince himself that that was the truth, but then a bundled-up Steven Harrington had exited the station’s front doors and had taken all of Billy’s thoughts with him.

With a toboggan hat jammed over that unforgettable head of hair and his wiry body wrapped up in a plush, oversized coat, it hadn’t exactly been the best first look that he could’ve gotten after a decade, but the sight had nonetheless shocked him enough that his breath literally caught in his chest. Transfixed, he’d watched Steve, utterly oblivious to his far-off observer, traipse over to his own car, get in it, ignite the engine, and then drive away; despite something so inherently normal, it’d taken him some time afterwards to be able to get a grip on what’d just happened. Steve was supposed to be long gone from this dead-end town, a footnote in Hawkins’ past, and a swarm of unanswered questions had burned away at him without resolution. But, back in the present, he now suddenly had the keys to the truth, and he couldn’t wait another second being none the wiser.

“My turn,” he said suddenly, reveling in changing the subject, just like that, only because it was in his favor. “Why’re you still here in this dump? Would’ve figured a bigwig like you would’ve fled to Chicago the first chance you got. You strike me as a Cubs fan. No offence.”

Steve raised and lowered his eyebrows in a telling fashion, lifting his cup to his lips and finally taking a tiny sip of his too-hot coffee. When he resurfaced, he made a face and licked his tongue over his straight, white teeth and said, “I kind of did, for a while. Indianapolis, though.”

“ _Mm_ , I remember hearing something about that.” That was a bald-faced lie; he only remembered finding out that Steve had shipped off, because it was like he’d been toiling away at the mall one day and had been gone the very next. But Billy hadn’t had time to investigate it, because, by then, he’d started his own senior year, and it’d taken him the rest of it until he could disappear like Steve had. At the time, he’d known that he’d never see Steve again, and he’d accepted it a long time ago. If only he knew then what he knew now. If only he’d known a lot of things. “Clearly, that didn’t pan out.”

“Yeah, thank god. I hated it. Nothing but day-in-day-out dipshit stockbrokers sneering at me for my nepotistic hiring and ineptitude and because I’m—” Steve suddenly flushed, then looked abashed. Finishing that thought would evidently require broaching the only topic that they were pointedly avoiding, and his apprehension only made it more painfully obvious. “Well, you know. I don’t need to go into detail on that.”

“Go on,” Billy demanded. With his curiosity too piqued by Steve’s hidden past, he suddenly didn’t care about what he’d said before. It had to happen sooner or later, anyways. “I want to hear it.”

“Okay,” Steve mumbled. He cleared his throat and yanked at the sleeves of his wool sweater; the swift motion pulled a little at the collar, briefly flashing a swatch of pale skin and one sharp clavicle hidden there. “Well, I was the only, uh, omega there—well, as far as I knew. I was pretty sure at least one of the secretaries was one too, but I never had time to talk to her about how she handled it. Anyways, besides being total assholes, they were mostly alphas, including my dad, so much so that I could count on my hands the number of higher-ups that weren’t. It was one big, stupid boy’s club, meaning there were no women or minorities, either. Goes to show how out of touch they were.” He breathed in heavily but didn’t exhale, and, when he spoke next, it was tremendously quiet. “It was probably the worst time of my life, man.”

On pure impulse, the ever-vigilant officer in Billy made him drop his fisted hands to the edge of the scratched Formica tabletop. “They ever do anything to you?”

Steve’s eyes went wide at his abrupt and aggressive line of questioning, but they only grew wider still when he caught on to the implication.

“No, _no_ , of course not,” he stressed. “Never, not once. It just majorly sucked, that’s all. As soon as the summer after my graduation ended, my dad pretty much forced me into coming to work for him, because it’s not like I had any other plans. Suddenly, I was an idiot nineteen-year-old in an unfamiliar city, without any of my friends, stuck working in at a cutthroat business where nobody—especially not me—wanted me there. I was miserable for about a year and a half, until I woke up one day and just snapped, just couldn’t take it anymore. I threw everything I owned into my car and fucked off back home without warning, and, once I was back in Hawkins, I quit over the phone. My dad wouldn’t talk to me for a long while after that, but that wasn’t exactly a bad thing.”

Billy slowly deflated over the course of his explanation, uncurling his hands and laying them flat out in front of him. “What’d ya do next?”

Steve took another drink, larger and more confidently this time, and momentarily held up a slender finger as he swallowed. Billy only had eyes for how Steve’s throat bobbed as the coffee worked its way down.

“I had some pretty solid savings from that job, which was literally the only positive that came from it,” Steve continued, moving the cup aside as if he were finished with it, even though it wasn’t even halfway empty; he seemingly just wanted an open place to set his entwined hands as he slightly wrung them. “Took some time off for a while and traveled all over, from visiting friends around the country to even going abroad to try to find some meaning in life. Eventually, not having roots got old, so I came back. Not too long after that, my mom got into a pinch at her company, so I volunteered to help her out. When she realized I was pretty good at it, she pretty much made me to come work for her. I didn’t really have a reason to say no, so I just kind of fell into it, and here I still am.”

“You never said what you do.” Billy tried to imagine an elitist job equivalent to stockbroking, but he couldn’t think of anything that matched a trust fund kid as enigmatic as Steve.

“If you recall, I tried to the other night at the quarry,” Steve lightly reprimanded, giving him a half-smile. “Art dealer. Y’know, like selling pieces from private collections and estates to other private buyers or, sometimes, public galleries and museums. Auctions, appraisals, lining up restorations, and so on. Mostly, I’m just there to negotiate prices or to assuage clients’ worries, and they send me all over the place to deal with them in person. Something about my face must be trustworthy or something. It pays the bills.”

Billy looked pointedly at the ostentatious watch on Steve’s wrist until he followed his line of sight, only to blush as he tugged his sweater sleeve down over it. “I’m sure,” Billy deadpanned. “Just how are you doing that here in Hawkins? This shithole doesn’t have the money for culture.”

Steve made a face, red spots still high on his cheeks, even though he nodded his head in what seemed like a small concession. “I mean, it’s no LA, but it’s gotten better since you left. Alright, yeah, I can’t exactly conduct business around here, but we’re exactly halfway between the two biggest cities in Indiana, so the location’s pretty accessible for what it is. My mom handles the day-to-day operations in Indianapolis, I help out at one of our fledgling offices in Fort Wayne, and it’s only about an hour from here either way. The main one is in Chicago, and that’s where everything big happens.”

“Then why not just move there? Or Fort Wayne? It’d save on gas.”

“Because.” For a brief second, Billy thought that was going to be his entire explanation. “The cost of living is dirt cheap here, it’s familiar, and most of my friends still live around or relatively nearby. And,” he added, darkly, “anywhere’s better than being stuck under my dad’s thumb in Indianapolis. _Anywhere._ ” He then threw up his hands, seemingly sick of talking about himself any longer. “So…what’s your story? Besides moving to California before you’d even graduated or surreptitiously becoming a cop, that is.”

Billy wanted to ask where he’d heard that rumor, and, more than that, he wanted to know why Steve still remembered it. “I graduated,” he corrected. “Just didn’t bother with that bullshit ceremony. I went to the main office the last week before school was out and got my diploma directly, and they were more than happy to oblige once I buttered ’em up a little.”

Some patrons entered the diner and walked around their isolated booth, and Steve watched them pass with weary eyes as he spoke. “That’s news to me. Max always made it sound like you packed your bags in the middle of the night and disappeared like a man, ironically, on the run from the law, not towards it.” At Billy’s sudden bark of laughter, he snapped his eyes back to him, startled.

“Eh, she’s not wrong,” he chuckled, humor evaporating as he spoke. “Truth is, as soon as I was able, I also threw everything I owned into my car and left, just like that, just like you. Difference is that I drove cross-country and stayed with some old high school friends there, the ones I made before moving to Hawkins, for a good while until I got the idea to go to the academy. Not much else happened after that. It’s just been a slow climb to the top.”

Oh, there had been, in both his career and personal life, but he wasn’t going to bring up his dirty laundry for no damn reason.

Steve slapped his hands onto the table and then re-crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. Outside, the storm had picked up a little more speed, and the rapidly increasing flashes of lightning were almost matching his sudden mood. “There has to be more to it than that,” he retorted, chin accusingly jabbing in his direction. “You were, like, the biggest truant I knew! With all the underage smoking and drinking and fighting you did, there’s no way you’d up and decide to become ‘the man’ just like that.”

Billy didn’t know why getting called out for his abridged story’s obvious inconsistencies amused him as much as it did; maybe it was because, unless Steve just had a good memory, he had specifically held onto these little facts about Billy for all these years, something that made him feel oddly sentimental. Still, not to give away his unusual sense of humor, he schooled his face into something crossed between irritation and exasperation.

“It wasn’t instant. I did odd jobs here and there, like escorting—” At that, Steve’s face dropped, suddenly too stunned to do anything but open his mouth and owlishly blink at him. “—and bouncing at a strip club. Wish I still did it, sometimes. Had a lot of fun.” And a lot of ‘not fun’, too, but that just came with the territory, regardless if he was the one putting out or not.

“…Which, ah, which one?” Steve cleared his voice when it came out all froggy.

“Either,” Billy truthfully shrugged. “Like I said, fun, just in different ways. But they weren’t sustainable, would’ve only ended in diseases or violence or burnout, maybe an early death, and just like you getting up and deciding you’d had enough of your dad’s bullshit company, I just kind of realized I wanted to do something—fuck, I don’t know, bigger than myself. For once.” He paused for a second to chew at a raw patch on the inside of his lip, deep in thought. They were heading into darker territory, and he was preparing himself for it. “College was and is a racket for guys like me, military was out of the question, ’cause my dad had threatened that too many times for me to just do it voluntarily, but being a cop didn’t sound so bad. It wouldn’t be nearly as strict as the military or as boring as college, and, if push came to shove, I’d at least be able to defend myself from any bad people. Cut my hair and stepped into the ring not long after.”

Out of all of that, Steve managed to notice the one key phrase that he’d inadvertently dropped in there. “Bad people? You…Max mentioned something about that.”

Considering the plain curiosity written on Steve’s face, Billy knew without any doubt that Steve had no idea just how efficiently he’d spearheaded their conversation into a topic that he was loath to discuss. Between that and Steve’s _fourth_ mention of his sister’s name, Billy’s frustration was now genuine. “I’m starting to wonder why she isn’t here, right now, doing this for me. What else did she say to you?”

Steve paused to look fleetingly around the diner. “You got…shot,” he almost whispered, as if merely saying it aloud would make Billy flinch. It wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean he was happy that he knew about it. _Dammit, Max._ “And you…almost died.”

Billy stiffly nodded, nostrils flaring out of his control, not breaking eye contact even to blink. If they wanted to reconnect, that meant no funny business, no lies, all ugly truths.

And that meant Steve needed to know.

“It was in 1990, a little over a year after completing my training and officially joining the force. I wasn’t involved in the original dispute, but I was in the vicinity and got called in for immediate backup. Some botched cocaine sting that’d gone south very quickly. We got them all, either by taking them out or by giving them life in a cell, but not before they managed to shoot a few of us, including me.”

“Oh,” Steve said dumbly, words escaping into the air like the wisps of steam from his coffee. “Oh.”

Billy ignored him. “Five bullets. One in my arm, three in my chest, and another in my thigh that came millimeters away from my femoral artery. Doctors said that once I got better, I should head over to Las Vegas and clean house with those odds.” He chuckled bitterly, and it came out as harsh as the storm raging outside; even half a decade on, there wasn’t an ounce of humor to be found in any of it, and that would probably never change. “Still have two of them and plenty of shrapnel in me, but I lived. My partner didn’t. Good man.”

“Fuck,” Steve breathed. Although the diner was moderately busy, it’d somehow gone pin-drop quiet. “I’m…I don’t know what to say.”

There was a buzzing feeling, a familiar head rush that came whenever he started to disassociate from his surroundings, but Billy pushed on, even though he barely registered what he was saying. The hardest part was getting the floodgates open; after that, it was all too easy for every miserable little thought in his miserable little skull to pour out of his mouth like a rainspout. It was a phenomenon that usually only occurred in his most intense therapy sessions, but, oddly, it felt natural to unload all of this onto Steve. He supposed that it was because he hadn’t known him five years ago, that he had never heard this tale before, that he was an attentive listener, but there was some other element that he didn’t want to think about too much, lest he slip it into his already rambling conversation.

“Y’know, other than the sounds of gunshots, I don’t remember much. They told me I covered for him, meaning I was the reason he only took two bullets, but one of his somehow managed to lodge itself in his brachial, and he lost too much blood and died on the operating table.” He stopped himself from adding that he got a Medal of Valor for that endeavor, but he dearly preferred if that skeleton stayed in his closet. Thinking about it just added insult to injury— _a fucking cheap medal in exchange for a good man’s life, what a fucking value_ —and he didn’t need to see another layer of pity in Steve’s eyes.

“Billy…god, that fucking sucks.”

“Yeah.” He broke from his memories and started to rein himself in, only because it wouldn’t do either of them any good if he started falling apart right here in this greasy spoon. “It really fucking does. He was a good man, better than me, and his wife had just had their second kid. I was the fuckin’ rookie asshole that didn’t play by the rules or have a family to take care of. I would’ve, _should’ve_ died in his place, but life’s an unfair bitch like that, and the least I could do was try to pick up where he’d left off.” He turned his head back to the window and watched the storm carry on outside, feeling no small amount of gratification at its unrelenting fury. “I’m sure Max paraphrased that, too.”

Steve’s voice alternated between hushed and placating. “A little,” he admitted. “Not nearly enough. But she…she was right about something else. I don’t recognize you anymore. You’re not the same person you were in high school.”

Billy didn’t turn his head, just looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “I am. I just try not to be.”

The moment broke without warning when the waitress descended upon their table with two plates of standard breakfast-for-dinner food, blissfully unaware of what she’d interrupted with her an inopportune appearance. Apart from the minor surprise, neither Billy nor Steve minded; they both shifted in their seats and tilted almost grateful faces up at the welcome distraction. Things had quickly spiraled into something deeper than either were prepared to deal with, much less with each other. They were managing to stay friendly, but they were still a long way from being friends.

“Thanks,” Billy told her, ripping the little paper ring around his own set of silverware. He cocked his head a little so he could read her name tag, which was a slightly challenging task with the overhead lighting casting an illegible glare on the plastic, and he pretended not to notice how she’d unfastened the top two buttons of her dress since the last time she’d been at the table. “…Margaret.”

She battered her eyelashes and beamed down at his burning gaze—well, no more than normal, because he couldn’t turn it off if he tried, but she didn’t know that. Steve politely followed his lead, even though she again acted as if he wasn’t there, and Billy felt rather offended on his behalf. “Yes, thank you.”

She backed away, nodding only in Billy’s direction and murmuring, “Let me know if I can _do_ anything else for you,” and Billy had to fight to suppress an eye roll. This girl was about as subtle as a heart attack; the least she could do was pretend it was still about food. With his fork perched in his right hand, Steve’s eyes flickered between the two of them again, and he raised his other thumb to rub at his brow in confusion. Billy waited until she’d walked away, and he winked once, casually, at Steve before starting to shove rubbery scrambled eggs into his face.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Billy had finished half of his serving when he decided to look over at Steve, who was staring down at his barely touched food and pushing around a sad-looking yolky chunk to either end of his plate. He didn’t need to guess about what was on Steve’s mind, and enough time had passed that he was ready to lapse back into another intensely personal topic, if only to give them something to talk about.

“God, what a mood killer. So, you gettin’ any?”

He didn’t mean to, but his timing coincided with Steve lifting the egg-laden fork to his mouth, and Billy watched in real time as Steve suddenly inhaled and nearly choked on his bite of food.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swore, not quietly, fork clattering to the table and eyes streaming as he coughed up a lung. A couple of people at the counter swiveled around to look at him, but he paid them no heed. He lashed out an arm and snatched up his coffee for a much-needed drink; once he’d gulped enough liquid down, he leaned in to hiss, hoarsely, “Would I be asking you for _stuff_ if I did?”

Billy couldn’t hide his smile. There was that familiar fiery attitude again, something that his younger self used to love to evoke, still present even after so much time had passed between them. A small, treacherous part of him had keenly missed riling up Steve until he eventually snapped like a coiled spring. “Good point, probably not.”

Steve continued drinking his cup to the last dregs and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, all pretense of politeness gone for the time being—only adding to Billy’s delight—before roughly gesturing in his direction with the same arm. “Okay, then, you?”

“Yeah, got a white picket fence with a blonde, blue-eyed wife and two-point-five kids waiting for me back home.” He scoffed for good measure, just in case Steve somehow didn’t notice his heavy sarcasm and suddenly went white as a sheet or something. “Don’t forget the golden retriever. What do you think?”

“Guess we’re both single _and_ stupid.” Steve’s nostrils flared as he spoke. “Got it. Are you sure you want to get into this?”

Billy eyed him as he scraped a knife over his toast, using a lone pat of butter from one of the frustratingly-hard-to-open containers that the waitress had thrown down like dice at a craps table.

“I’ve already told you my sob story,” he muttered. “If we’re gonna catch up, then let’s catch up. No half measures. And, eventually, that means addressing that night back in 1984, so don’t let me shirk away from that.”

Steve’s eyes just about bugged out of his head, but he didn’t say anything about it, just waved his hands and turned back to his own food. His appetite had returned very suddenly, and, considering how gawky he looked, Billy felt a small amount of approval. It went without saying that he thought that Steve should be focusing on improving himself before having a baby, but that was a topic for a later time.

“Okay. Fine. Yeah, I’ve dated. All over and with lots of different types of people. A handful of serious relationships throughout the years, but most of them not.” He ripped his own piece of toast into quarter shreds and popped an unbuttered morsel into his mouth; Billy grimaced, thinking the cheap bread would be as dry and flavorful as sand without anything on it, but Steve just continued speaking between bites. “Hell, I even almost got engaged at some point, and that was a close call, all things considered. But, with my career and schedule, it’s hard to find the time. I travel too much to bother wining and dining, and Hawkins isn’t exactly open season in the first place, unless you want to date people you knew and hated in high school.” Using the index finger of his fork-holding hand, he pointed squarely between Billy’s eyes. “Now, you?”

“Only one that’s been long-term. It ended last spring.”

Steve stopped chewing so he could swallow, then laughed lowly in disbelief. “Damn, it sounds like we switched sexual histories. Who would’ve thought I’ve gotten more than you?”

With his toast and eggs now demolished, Billy derisively guffawed as he broke his last piece of bacon into halves and ate one of them. “Yeah, no. That’s impossible. Remember, I was an escort.”

“That was a job, dude, it doesn’t count if they paid you.”

“Sex is sex, so it counts,” he replied, the other half of bacon disappearing. “I suppose any number of them could’ve led to other relationships, but ninety-nine percent of them were casual on purpose.”

“What about your ex?” Steve piped up, only to shy away a second later. “Is that too forward to ask?”

“God, you sound just like my therapist.” He didn’t miss the split-second look of bewilderment that crossed Steve’s face at that little tidbit. “No, I don’t care. We were together for four-and-a-half years, long enough that we had a place a little ways out of town where it wasn’t so crowded or damn loud. He was an LA native who owned some upscale restaurant with his family, as well as another alpha, which made things interesting. Especially towards the end.”

“Ah,” Steve said evenly, carefully. If he was surprised to hear Billy openly admitting to being gay, he hid it well. Or, considering that Steve’s face was a perpetual open book, it was more likely that he’d already suspected as such. “I take that means it wasn’t a mutual breakup.”

“No, it most certainly was not.”

Chancing a little further, he tried, “May I ask why?”

“Life,” Billy bit out. Talking about getting shot was one thing, his dad’s accident was another, but broaching the topic of the end of his longest relationship was its own beast; those were still-healing wounds, ones that he’d only started successfully ignoring on a day-to-day basis since being far away from California, far away from _him_ , and Steve had unknowingly re-opened them last Friday at the Sattler quarry. “He wanted things that I didn’t. Things that I couldn’t give him. Physically.”

Steve went very still, and, when he spoke, his breath was shallow. “That being?”

Billy’s gaze was like a murky, glazed-over pond: cool, dangerous, depth-concealing. “You know what I mean.”

And Steve nodded, imperceptibly at first, but it quickly became more expressive. “Yeah, I do. But,” in a purposeful, no-nonsense mimicry of Billy, “I want to hear it.”

 _Look who finally grew a backbone_ , Billy thought haughtily. _’Bout time._

“He wanted a family. Which was impossible for us, obviously, and he threw away nearly five years together for a fool’s errand search of someone who could give it to him.” Billy took one glance at Steve and felt nothing but loathing for the sudden overwhelming sadness in those big eyes. He could deal with horror and worry, grit his teeth at pity and shame, but not sorrow, especially not on account of his failed relationship with Michael. “And them’s the breaks.”

The tines of Steve’s fork clanged against his three-quarter-empty plate when he suddenly leaned over the table, and, for a heart-stopping moment, a horrified Billy wondered if Steve was stupid enough to try to grab his hand for comfort. But his fears were unfounded, because Steve had simply up and decided to seize Billy’s own empty plate, pull it across the laminate, and stack theirs together; after he’d thrown his used napkin and some paper scraps on top of it all, he dropped his offending hand back under the table again. “I just want to say that…about the elephant in the room…I don’t think we should talk about it right now. At least, not right here.”

Billy wholeheartedly agreed, more so with the former sentiment than the latter, but there was no way they could leave the diner premises without even addressing it—that is, unless he left for the bathroom and crawled out of a window, which still wasn’t out of the question.

“What do you have in mind?” He asked, smirking, even if his heart wasn’t fully in it. The easiest, most sure-fire way to make anything less awkward between them was to purposefully get Steve all flustered, and he relied on that now. “Is this some covert way of inviting me back to your place for a nightcap?”

As expected, Steve groaned in exasperation and looked up at the ceiling. “God, you can’t help yourself, can you?” There was a ghost of a smile playing at his lips, but then the reality of the situation must’ve hit him harder than before, for he turned standoffish on a dime. “No, that’s not what I was getting at.”

Billy was never in a mood for beating around the bush, and this time was no exception.

“I know what you’re getting at,” he said quietly, jaw set. “That we should postpone this longer than necessary, and I wish we could. Fuck, I’ve tried. But we can’t go on dancing around the subject, Harrington. We both know it’s the only reason we’re here talking right now.”

Steve’s little sharp inhale echoed in his ears. “It isn’t—it’s not the only reason,” he insisted, and the lie was blatant to them both. “But it is the main one, I’ll give you that.” Billy didn’t immediately say anything in return, and Steve slumped backwards into his seat and fretfully ran his hands through his hair; he looked crestfallen, bordering on ashamed. “I’m really sorry I blindsided you with this,” he mumbled. “Things would’ve been much easier if my only goal was to clear the air between us and nothing else.”

But that wouldn’t have been the truth, and, now, there was no way to put the cat back in the bag. Billy opened his mouth, just about to give an actual response, but a loud clanging noise somewhere in the back of the kitchen shook him to his senses. For seven-forty-five on a weeknight, there were far too many people in here for his liking, and Steve was right about one thing—they shouldn’t do this here, not where anyone could easily eavesdrop.

Leaning cockeyed on the fake leather seat to pull out his wallet out from his back pocket, he raised a single finger to call for their checks. It took no time at all for the waitress to start hurrying over; she’d been behind the counter directly across from their table, wiping a damp rag in circles on the already-spotless surface and watching them talk with the acuity of a wolf around sheep. “Let’s head outside. It’s not pouring as hard now.”

That was true: while it was still rainy and dreary, the downpour had faded to a gentler stream about halfway through their meal. Still, it was humid, and the wind was brusque, which meant they weren’t going to have the luxury of standing and talking for as long as they had last Friday. _All the better_ , Billy thought. _An incentive to piss or get off the pot._

“Yeah, sure, okay.” Steve blinked, mystified, but he handled the sudden shift well. He did the same as Billy and pulled out a crisp five and two ones from his pocket, which would cover his own meal and, not intending to get change, his tip of two dollars.

Billy didn’t know this, but Steve liked to think of himself as a good tipper. A summer of getting stiffed and mistreated by horrendous Scoops Ahoy customers had made him permanently sympathetic to food service workers, so much so that he didn’t think twice about giving a forty percent gratuity, double of what was normally expected. He figured that was more than fair, but then he caught sight of the twenty that Billy slapped onto the table, and his mouth comically popped open.

“Did you just leave a _fifteen_ -dollar tip for a _five_ -dollar meal?” He paused, and Billy watched his face screw up as he did the mental math. It didn’t take him long, but maybe that was because of the rounded numbers; to put it nicely, Steve hadn’t exactly been National Honor Society material back in the day. “That’s like…a _three-hundred-percent_ gratuity!”

“What can I say, she provided excellent service,” Billy shrugged. He was smirking again, but the skin around his eyes had gone tight. “Unfortunately for her, that’s all she’s going to get from me.”

Steve wrinkled his nose at the innuendo. “I’m sure that’ll console her,” he deadpanned, grabbing his windbreaker from the seat and sliding out from his end of the booth first. He didn’t look back as he walked on, and Billy snatched up his own jean jacket—plenty of things about him had changed, but elements of his effortless fashion sense certainly hadn’t—so he could trail after him; after the whole tip affair, Steve probably assumed that he was going to butter the waitress up one last time before they left, which was funny, considering that he’d made his disinterest in flirting with her obvious. It was a good thing that she was nowhere to be seen, because she surely would’ve accosted him otherwise.

He pushed through one set of glass doors, where Steve had momentarily paused until he could join him there. Together, they exited through the other set, each opening their own and walking out into the sticky, heavy air that smelled of muddy earth, wet pavement, and worms.

Steve automatically moved in the direction towards his car, for some reason acting like it still wasn’t raining, and Billy abruptly stopped under the awning and made a noise for Steve to do the same. He’d gotten to the sidewalk before he stopped, looped back around, and came back up to stand by Billy’s right-hand side.

With the cold gray light giving a new perspective, Billy subtly examined him from the corner of his eye. Steve was at least a year older than him, pale and skinny where he was tan and muscled, and, right up against him now, Billy had forgotten that he had an inch or so on him, too; as if thinking the same thing, Steve somewhat leveled the playing field by shifting his weight to one leg. Then, they just stood there, watching and listening to the gentle smattering of rain as it hit the hot ground.

“So.” That came from Steve, and the tension in his tone was palpable.

Billy exhaled, wishing he’d thought to bring along his carton of cigarettes in his jacket’s breast pocket; he’d had to cut back on his smoking habit dramatically since joining the force, but being back here in Hawkins made old habits die hard. His fingers twitched at his sides. “So.”

“I know what you said,” Steve started in abruptly. “And I know we shouldn’t put it off, but there’s absolutely no reason we can’t just do this next time.” He was all but pleading now, eyes locked onto his own car in the distance and undoubtedly wishing to be in it and pulling away. “It’s all shitty and rainy, and, I don’t know, it feels too real now.”

 _What did ya expect?_ Billy wondered, reasonably annoyed that Steve was still dragging his feet. _No matter where you are or what you’re gonna do, it’s gonna feel real. Out of everyone in the world, you came to me, and now you’re hesitating?_

He wanted to say just that, but he settled on giving him a very lengthy eye roll instead. “Oh, and that dusty-ass quarry was any better? What was your excuse then?” He huffed for good measure, but there was no real acerbity to his tone. “You’re not proposing to me, loser. You want me to ejaculate into a cup for you, yes or no?”

He’d expected a laugh or even a sound of outrage, but the one thing that he didn’t expect was for Steve to merely sigh. Another sideways look revealed his drawn face and slumped shoulders, suddenly crushed, and Billy realized too late that that’d been the wrong approach to take.

“Yes, I do,” Steve whispered, just barely audible over the rain and still avoiding his eyes. Although his words were quiet, his demeanor clashed with how unwavering his voice was. “And I know you’re right, that it’s now or never. So…don’t hold back. Just tell me how you feel about it.” He looked at Billy now, galactic-sized brown eyes also not holding anything back. “Truthfully.”

Under that unabashed, suppliant stare, Billy didn’t think he could lie, even if he wanted to. “I’m fucking scared as hell,” he murmured. “How would it even work?”

“Well, you just mentioned the cup—”

“Not that,” he interrupted. “I get that part. A turkey baster during a heat or whatever the fuck you’re gonna do.” Steve shifted on his heels again, and Billy figured that meant he’d hit the nail on the head. “No, I mean, how would it _work_? Am I supposed to just head back to California with the knowledge that my fuckin’ _kid_ is back here? That they’ll never know who I am, or, at least, not until they’re old enough to bother tracking me down?”

The thought was inconceivable: he’d, what, be back home driving around, and, completely unbeknownst to him, some curly-haired child would be saying its first words? He’d be watching television, and it’d be taking its first steps? He’d be at work, and it’d be its first day of preschool? Middle school? High school? How was he supposed to go about living his life permanently unaware of what was happening back here in Indiana?

Steve, to his credit, seemed to comprehend his moral quandary; he wrung his fingers, and his eyes creased in sympathy. “I guess that depends on what you’re comfortable with,” he admitted. “I definitely don’t intend to hide your existence from them forever, and, like you said, they’d be free to contact you only once they’re old enough to understand what that means.”

A lump had appeared in Billy’s throat, and he immediately wondered at what point he’d started getting mushy so damn easily. Endlessly wondering about the missed milestones was an unsavory concept, however, the biology aspect aside, it wouldn’t be his child, not really. That was all too easy to tell himself, and he wanted to believe it, but why did it still feel like he was already abandoning something that didn’t even exist?

As if reading his mind, Steve somehow found a way to make things worse. “But I’ve got to tell you now that I’m pretty steadfast on it being _my_ baby. So, if’s that’s the deal breaker, then so be it.”

Billy came very, very close to exploding.

“ _Jesus_ —that’s another thing—look, I don’t know why the _fuck_ you’re so set on doing this by yourself!” Billy threw up his hands and twisted on the pavement to face him directly. For some reason, Steve was acting like he only had until the end of this year to get pregnant, and Billy had no goddamn clue as to why. “What’s the big fuckin’ rush? It’s not like you don’t have time to find someone to do this nuclear family shit with in the next few years!”

Now, it was Steve’s turn to get agitated. His face twisted up, his jaw worked, and there was fire behind those eyes, as well as something that, if Billy didn’t know any better, he would’ve called bitterness. “There isn’t going to be a ‘someone’, and that’s my decision,” Steve snapped, crossing his arms and pressing them tightly into his chest. “And, yeah, I know I have plenty of time, but my friends are all moving on with their lives and having kids of their own, and _I_ want that, too. Why bother putting countless hours into useless relationships just so I can end up in the same place I am right now? God, if I have to spend the next few years being some weird, lonely outsider while they’re all off raising their families, I’m gonna put a fucking gun in my mouth.”

Billy froze, and, on an angry exhale, he growled out, “Don’t say that.” He’d called in too many 10-56As—and, from time to time, some 10-56s—to be able to stomach that kind of flippant figurative speech for the rest of his natural life.

In response to Billy’s sudden gravitas, Steve swallowed and dipped his head, but he didn’t sound regretful. “I’m just being hyperbolic. But I meant the rest of what I said— _I’m_ ready. If you’re not comfortable with it, just tell me now so I can start looking elsewhere. I guess enough’s enough.”

And there he was, at the end of his period of deliberation and still facing the fork in the road, still completely and utterly lost as to which was the correct direction to go down, still as stuck as he’d been over the last few days. He knew it wasn’t fair to keep stringing Steve along if he had no intention of going through with this; the complicated thing was that he didn’t know if he _didn’t_ , and that’s exactly what put ice in his veins and made his head ache.

Billy had his mouth open, completely poised to tell him that he couldn’t, but—like a flash of lightning or a sudden nosebleed dripping down one’s philtrum—an otherworldly _urge_ bubbled up and made something else entirely pass through his teeth. He didn’t even realize what he’d said until a few seconds had passed, and nothing shocked him more when he didn’t feel the need to immediately recant it.

“Okay.”

The world went still and quiet, and, unless it’d miraculously stopped raining, he’d just gone deaf. For all he knew, this was some alternate reality where the diner had disappeared behind him, too, where there was nothing but an endless void of black and a shallow sea of water beneath his feet. The only thing that kept him grounded was the sight of Steve still there, even more pale-faced than usual and nothing short of stunned beyond belief.

“‘Okay, find someone else’ or ‘okay, let’s do this’?”

The buzzing in Billy’s ears made Steve’s words sound as if they were a transmission coming from outer space. “The last one,” he choked out, and it was a wonder that his heart didn’t give out right here, right now. “ _Fuck._ ”

Steve’s hand promptly wrapped around his forearm, and Billy just stared at him, awestruck at his boldness. “I don’t want to you to agree to this unless you’re sure,” Steve stressed, his eyes wild and his grip tight enough to be just shy of hurting. But that was good, because his touch was doing a better job of keeping him saner than his four other senses combined. “It’s a big deal, Billy, and I don’t want to be left high and dry out of nowhere if you up and decide to change your mind. Don’t do this if you’re not ready. I mean it.”

And the funny thing was, he didn’t think he really would ever be; hell, Michael had said as much, as well as much worse. But there was one overarching reason that kept him from changing his mind on the spot, one reason that he hadn’t immediately turned Steve down, even back at the quarry. It was the same motivation that initially led him to turn his life around and to become a police officer, to instinctively cover Sergeant Ortega in the shootout, to return to Hawkins and to deal with his father’s affairs on his behalf: it just felt like the right thing to do.

Billy had done enough bad things in his life, and it’d taken him years to find out—the very hard way—that it made the good things that he did matter all that much more. There was already so much he regretted, so many things that kept him up at night, and too much of it he could never completely repent for; but here, looking down the barrel of a choice that wasn’t inherently as bad as it was _challenging_ , it didn’t feel like a mistake in the making. If there was a benign way that he could help fulfill Steve’s life, someone who he’d grievously wronged and never once bothered to make it right all those years ago, then he wanted to do it. Because, deep down, that was the only answer, and he’d always known it, even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself.

Steve’s hand was still on his clothed arm and burning him like a brand, spurring him to spill his thoughts from his parted lips like an oil slick.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m still scared shitless, but, fuck…” Billy laughed now, although it came out rather maniacal. “I’ve always known I’m never going to have kids, don’t have the temperament or the interest, and my dad fucked me up too much to even try. And if this will—” He stopped suddenly, throat bobbing in emotion. _If this will make at least one of us happy…_ “As long as we strike some sort of deal where the kid at least knows I’m out there, that it wasn’t that I didn’t like ’em enough to stick around, and you, I don’t know, keep me updated once in a while…”

In one fell swoop, Steve removed the pressure of his grip and pulled his hand away, and some part of Billy wished he hadn’t, as pathetic as that sounded. Steve’s eyes were overly bright in the dimming evening light, practically glowing like embers. “I can definitely do that,” he eagerly agreed, clasping his hands together in front of his torso. “As much as you want, no problem.”

“Then I can find a way to deal with it.” Billy lifted a limp hand in an attempt at an insouciant gesture. “I mean, I’ll have the better part of a year before it’s even born, right? That’s enough time for a grown-ass man to get a grip.” He didn’t add ‘probably’, although he did think it.

“Thank you.” It might’ve been cloudy, but Steve was beaming like the sun, those same eyes now two pools of swirling emotion. “Really, truly, thank you.”

And then he abruptly stepped back, dropping his hands to his hips as casually as possible, but it was impossible to conceal the unrepentant elation still written plainly on his face. When he spoke, he poorly affected a more professional tone. “Okay, let me get some legal affairs in order, and I’ll be in touch soon.”

Billy frowned at him, and his dark, thick eyebrows knitted together in equal parts confusion and suspicion. “The fuck does that mean? I’m never going to fight you for custody, you can bet on that.”

With one hand still on his hip, Steve waved the other in an attempt to mollify him, but it only raised Billy’s hackles that much more. “No, no, I know that. I meant, like, financial affairs. I’ll have my lawyer draft up what would constitute a fair payment.”

“Paym—I’m not doing this for _money_ ,” Billy barked, suddenly fuming. The topic of compensation had never factored into the discussion, and he vehemently despised the mere idea of it. “How little do you think of me?”

Steve faltered, seemingly just as surprised as Billy, but in the opposite way; he clearly hadn’t expected Billy to turn down what was essentially the easiest cash that he’d ever make in his entire life. “Uh—it’s the least I could do? You deserve to get something worthwhile out of this,” he began, brow creasing as Billy started to look more dangerous by the second, eerily becoming that angry, volatile high school maniac again. “I know your dad has bills, and LA is getting more expensive every year. I, um, should know, nearly every time I go there I’ve had to supplement my per diems…”

“I’m not taking your money for this, that’s scummy as fuck,” Billy spoke through gritted teeth, shaking his head violently. “What, does that mean you’re eventually gonna have to tell the kid that you paid some random asshole three figures for his stupid fuckin’ semen? It’s already fucking weird enough as is, so don’t try to pretend that this is some normal transaction.”

“Five,” Steve meekly corrected.

Billy’s eyes bugged out of his head, and his temples throbbed from what felt like an incoming migraine. “ _Fuck off_ ,” he spluttered, outraged. “I don’t give a shit if it’s six or seven or a blank fuckin’ check. Call me up when you’re in a fuckin’ heat, and I’ll come over to your house and jack off into some container. Capisce?”

“Uh, I—”

“Say ‘yes, Billy’.” He was as done with this conversation as he looked and sounded, and, luckily, Steve recognized he was in absolutely no mood to argue.

“…Yes, Billy.”

“Great,” he scowled. He’d had more than enough of this for one night; he wanted to get far away from Steve’s big dumb face and soft eyes as soon as possible, but, even more than that, he wanted a Jack and Coke with a good cigarette and no one else to answer to for the rest of the night. “Lemme know when it’s show time, otherwise, I’ll see you around. Or not. Whatever.”

Always one for dramatic exits, he turned on his heel and started to walk away. The rain hit his face like shards of glass, but he was too in his own head to feel anything of the sort.

“Yeah,” Steve’s dazed voice called after him. “Yeah, okay, see you later.”

Getting into his truck and backing out of his parking spot, Billy pointedly ignored the conspicuous sight of Steve in his rear view mirror and, even as he pulled out of the diner parking lot, didn’t look back once. He thought about going home, but, on a whim, he instead decided to head to the liquor store down the road for a much-needed haul. He was working tomorrow, but his reserves demanded preemptive replenishing; he had a feeling that he’d be going through quite a few bottles in the upcoming days and weeks. He suddenly laughed at both everything and nothing in particular, not caring in the slightest if he sounded particularly crazy—he had more things on his plate to worry about for, well, the rest of his life.

* * *

Steve knew that he should’ve felt a strong sense of déjà-vu standing there, watching Billy leave again, but he didn’t, not really. This time, there was just enough contrast to their initial encounter at the quarry: there, it’d sunned, here, it rained; then, Billy had fled in a huff, now he left dispassionately; after it was all said and done, Steve had watched him leave in shock, now, he watched him leave in wonder. And, more than anything else, the biggest difference yet: Billy going from an indefinite answer to definitive agreement.

He remained there for a while longer, too inundated with his myriad of thoughts to bother moving towards his car. Unlike Billy, he at least didn’t have to worry about getting wet when he left; in the last few minutes, the storm had broken enough to finally slow to a faint drizzle, although the wet awning over Steve’s head still dripped like a shower faucet. But he did want to get home sooner rather than later, because it was also progressively getting harder to see—something that had more to do with the heavy, darkened cloud coverage than it did with the actual sun dipping past the skyline, although that did factor into it.

When the door opened behind him, he automatically moved out of the way and off to the side, but nobody passed by him; if it weren’t weird enough, soft fingertips suddenly started tapping twice on his clothed bicep. He turned around to face the mystery person, already with a faint idea of who it’d be.

And, of course, it was the waitress, her expectant face looking even better in natural low lighting than it had in the diner, despite the harsh artificial lights not being as inherently detrimental to someone as pretty as her. She was twisting her hands together and shifting side-to-side, and it took Steve a full minute to realize she held something in her grip.

Looking around, her face comically fell at the sight of only him standing there, a notion that Steve wistfully understood. “Oh no, did _he_ already leave? Darn.”

“Yeah,” he told her, still taking in her unexpected appearance. “He did.”

She clicked her tongue in disappointment. “Listen, this is embarrassing, but he left before I could give him my number.” She shrugged, aiming for aloof, but her face was growing pink under her makeup again. “And since you two seem like good friends, is there any chance I can get you to pass it on to him?”

He had half a mind to tell her Billy’s name and career so she could track him down herself, or, perhaps, just tell her off in general, but Steve wasn’t that rude or that cruel, nor was he really that insulted at how she’d openly ignored him earlier in favor of focusing on Billy. He understood firsthand what it was like to have that piercing gaze hold him captive—it felt like molasses pouring over your brain, filling every fold and divot until it was pouring out of your ears, but you just didn’t care, you just let yourself be consumed by it until it consumed you.

“We’re n—sure.” There was no way that she’d even begin to understand, so he just nodded at her and held out a hand to take the paper. “I’ll see that he gets it.”

Her grin was blinding. “Thank you so much,” she breathed, pressing it into his hand and cupping hers on top of his for a brief second, touch as gentle as her eyes. “I swear, most other guys would’ve just tried to ask me out instead. He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

“Actually,” Steve’s own smile was wan as he hedged a glance in the direction that Billy had drove off, thinking, _if only she knew he’s going to be the father of my child._ “I’m the luckier one.”


	4. Chapter 4

_June 24, 1995_

Before Billy had come back, Max hadn’t been to 4819 Cherry Lane in years.

There hadn’t been any reason to: in the spring of her senior year of high school, her mom had finally, _finally_ reached her limit of walking on eggshells around her husband, and that’d led to them moving to a blessedly Neil-free apartment on the other side of town before the ink had even dried on the divorce papers. Max, who’d been utterly elated at the turn of events, had celebrated by throwing her possessions into some musty cardboard boxes and quite literally skipping out the front door, all with the mindset of never coming back again. By that autumn, just as she’d been gearing up to head off to Purdue, the nightmare of living with her ex-stepfather in that awful house had faded to a mere memory.

But, for some reason, her ex-stepbrother’s presence had been harder to shake, stubbornly lingering in her mind like the pungent whiffs of tobacco and cologne that she’d used to get walking by his empty room or those faint blood stains on the kitchen counter that, no matter how hard her mom had scrubbed, had never gone away. Billy had been long gone at that point, off in California doing god-knows-what to god-knows-who; nevertheless, she’d been consumed by the thought of what would’ve happened if he hadn’t left. They might’ve had a very difficult relationship, only compounded by the fact that he’d been a major asshole to her since the first day that they’d met, but Max had known in her heart of hearts that she wouldn’t have had the stomach to leave him to his father’s mercy—not again. That much had been clear.

So, it was almost funny, in a cosmic, cruel kind of way, that both Max _and_ Billy had somehow ended up at the same place that they’d never intended on returning to. Not only that, but this was her _third_ visit in the last six months—the previous times had been in January and February, respectively—and she already considered that three times too many; truthfully, she wouldn’t be here at all if Billy knew how to pick up the telephone every once in a while, but he was hopeless at contact unless she initiated it, and, even then, he was notoriously unreliable. Sometimes, things just had to be done the old-fashioned way, as much as that absolutely sucked.

Getting out of her street-parked car and using her hand to shield against the vivid daylight, her eyes scoured over every unbearably familiar inch of her old house—not home, not when Neil had been there to skulk around it. Initially, she’d been surprised to learn that her ex-stepfather had still been living here since the divorce, but it’d made sense when she’d ultimately laid eyes on the sheer disrepair that it’d fallen into, for there’d been no other explanation than Neil’s own negligence.

In the winter, the heavy snowfall had concealed a large portion of its flaws, but the summer sunlight illuminated them all, unforgivably so: there were the warped gutters full of dead leaves; the chipped white paint, crumbling like dust, as well as the yellowed vinyl siding covered with a layer of dirt and algae; the front hedges somehow simultaneously overgrown and dead, the top-most branches brown and wilting from a perpetual lack of pruning; and, to top it all off, the anemic chartreuse hue of the sad, dry, patchy lawn.

With a sigh, Max ambled up the raised walkway leading to the screened-in porch, shaking her head at the ripped panels on display there; a few were even missing entirely, which, in addition to looking ugly, defeated the whole point of the enclosure. When she furiously rang the doorbell, it sounded as weak and pitiful as the house looked— _talk about the cherry on top_ , she mentally groused.

“Billy!” She called, switching tactics and pulling open the unfamiliar loose wrought-iron storm door—apparently, that’d been Neil’s lone improvement in the last six years—so she could jiggle the main door handle; it was locked, thwarting her idea to barge in, so she pounded on the ocher-colored wood as annoyingly as possible. “I know you’re in there!”

To his credit, he didn’t ignore her, but it did take a little longer than necessary for him to saunter up to the door. There was a flash of movement behind the three amber-frosted door windows, and she heard the lock unclick with no small amount of hesitation; eventually, it opened just enough for a pair of sky-blue eyes to blearily peer out at her. She blew past him before he had a chance to get a word in otherwise.

In sharp contrast to the neglected exterior, the inside décor hadn’t changed at all, not in the last few months or the last decade. The walls, trim, and fireplace were still golden tan, cream, and Kelly green, respectively, and the hardwood, albeit slightly scuffed, still shined from some past owner’s mollycoddling. The open entryway and living room, split into two by a wide arch, were replete with furniture that’d been both outdated and unmoved since the eighties, no less than ninety-nine percent originating from their old place in California. Just from where she was standing in the foyer, she could see through the small kitchen to the dining room, her old bedroom to the right, and vestiges of the wide backyard through the back windows.

It was illogical (and slightly ironic), but she couldn’t help but feel like this was her own Hotel California, a portal directly into the not-so-distant past that she could never fully leave, where she was perpetually a teenager coming home from school and tiptoeing around just to avoid Neil’s attention. The accompanying head rush left her queasy, and, to counteract it, she whirled around and fixed Billy with a piercing stare—which, at this point, was something of a hallmark in their relationship. Hell, she’d perfected the look on him when they were younger.

“Why,” Max began, lips pursed of their own volition, “haven’t you been picking up the damn phone?”

The answer came in the form of the pillow lines on the side of his face and his short, rumpled waves—it’d been years, but a part of her still wasn’t used to his dramatic haircut—meaning that he’d been asleep, and deeply at that, even though it was eleven o’clock in the morning on a blue-skied Saturday, the last before July. It was far too lovely outside to let him sleep through the day, and the neighbors seemed to agree, for they were all mowing their lawns in harmony while some nearby kids shrieked and laughed. She opened her mouth to chide him about that, too, but she faltered when she suddenly recalled his topsy-turvy work schedule. Did he work graveyard last night? Tonight? Did she just wake him up from an essential slumber? _Ah, shit…_

But her worries vanished in favor of a fresh burst of irritation when, in response, he waved an airy hand and placed it onto his waist, a faded Los Angeles Angels t-shirt stretched against his chest and some loose gray sweatpants hanging off his hips. With her tie-dyed tank top, white capris, and lime-green flats, she almost looked overdressed in comparison, and that was saying something.

“Been busy,” he declared, voice gravel. He was half-smiling at her, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “What’s up?”

“What’s _up_?” She spluttered, eyes going comically wide in face of his nonchalance. They might not have been legally stepsiblings anymore, but no piece of paper could change how well she knew Billy, or, conversely, how well he pushed her buttons and fed off her indignation on a routine basis. That being said, she always fell for it—he was far too good at being annoying, damn him. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days, jackass!”

“I’ve been busy,” he repeated, still smirking as he waved her to follow him into the other end of the living room. “Why, is something wrong?”

“Oh, no, I just wanted to see if you were free for dinner,” she deadpanned. Trailing behind, her eyes stared daggers at the back of his dumb head. “On _Wednesday_. Clearly, we’re gonna have to reschedule.”

His laugh was silent as they took their respective seats; Max picked a worn brown leather armchair that was across from his spot on the couch, a lumpy beige pillow tucked into the corner and a thin blanket slung over the back. Between his makeshift bedding and the miscellaneous clutter strewn out all over the coffee table, it didn’t take a genius to recognize that he’d been spending most of his time out here rather than in his old room. She didn’t _need_ to state the obvious, but she did so anyways. “Weird being back here, huh?”

“You have no idea,” he groaned, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the cushions. That had to be rhetorical, because nobody else in the world _but_ Max could even begin to understand.

With the floral curtains closed and all the windows cracked, the room was cooler than expected, especially with how hot it was getting by the hour. There wasn’t any air conditioning in the house, but she figured that it wouldn’t matter if there were; she’d always known Billy to be partial to dry heat, so much so that the only thing he hated more than outright cold was swampy humidity, and eighty-something degree temperatures were nothing compared to the tremendous heatwaves that he was used to back in the valley. They had that in common, mostly: it’d been a while since she’d been back to California—the last time was in 1993, back when Michael had still been in the picture, and they’d all spent Christmas together—but, even all these years later, the fickle Midwest weather still got to her, too. Take the girl out of the west coast, can’t take the west coast out of the girl, all that jazz. At least it was easy enough to deal with when they were in the swing of summer, when the sunshine felt closest to what’d it been like back home.

“You look tired,” Max stated, sitting back in her chair and crossing her legs at the ankle. She half-expected Billy to flop over on the couch so that they could fully parody a therapist and her unwitting patient.

Great minds must think alike, because he picked up on the idea as quickly as she had. “Thanks for the assessment, doc,” he said dryly, but he really did; there was almost a haunted quality hiding beneath that thin veneer of confidence. “Wanna check my blood pressure, too?”

She huffed at him. “Hopper been giving you the crappiest shifts possible?”

“I volunteered,” he corrected, peering out at her from under heavy lids. “Phil’s got custody of his kids this month, and he deserves to spend extra time with them.”

“That’s nice of you.” Then, failing to suppress a tiny smile at his expense, she added, “ _Softy_ ,” with a fake cough, and that made him visibly bristle.

He ground his hands into the couch cushions, tilted his head up, and fixed her with a glower. “Did the same thing back home,” he grunted. “It’s not supposed to be ‘nice’. It’s just what you do for your unit, no matter how small. And they’re supposed to return the favor.”

“I know, I know. Just teasing you.”

They sat there for a few seconds, just looking at each other, but the silence was companionable. Somewhere outside, yet another lawn mower engine started, and it gradually faded in and out of the distance.

“So,” he started with a humorless snort. “That dinner story was bupkis, right? You’re just here to check up on me.”

She went to correct him and ended up shrugging instead. “Not entirely, but, hey, two birds, one stone.”

“God, that’s sad,” he groaned again. “I can take care of myself, Maxine.”

Rolling her eyes, she gave him a pointed look. “What’s _sad_ is having to come over here just to see if you’re still alive.” She swiveled around in her seat to look for the nearby phone on the wall, and she felt more than vindicated when she found the receiver lying haphazardly on a bookshelf, its plug clearly out of its socket. “Oh, well, would you look at that.”

For a brief second, Max had to wonder how Steve had initially called Billy’s phone if it were unplugged most, if not all, of the time. And, suddenly, she was struck by another thought: _wait, is he avoiding his calls?_

He followed her line of sight and grimaced, although she took that as conceding the point; thankfully, he also indirectly answered her question while he was at it. “Lousy telemarketers. And it’s only when I’m sleeping after a shift, so don’t read me the riot act.” Billy straightened and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Enough about me. Everything good with you?”

“What, me and Ronnie? Of course. He’ll be back in town on Tuesday, and I’m going to spend the Fourth with his family at their cabin on Lake Michigan.” And, just to gauge his immediate reaction, “You got any plans?”

As expected, he remained impassive, almost forcibly so. “You’re lookin’ at it.”

Max debated on getting into the biggest reason that she was here—well, the second biggest reason, because she really had been concerned about his radio silence. She hadn’t thought much of Billy not answering on Wednesday, and, admittedly, had forgotten to check in on Thursday, but, last night, when he hadn’t picked up _again_ , she’d gotten a nagging feeling to drop in on him in the morning. Deep down, her gut had told her that he was fine; _if_ something bad _had_ happened, he wouldn’t have showed up to work, and Hopper would’ve personally investigated the situation. No, the unfortunate truth was that Billy just liked to make her worry for no real reason, and he was good at it, too.

Anyways, now that she’d confirmed he was safe and alive and still utter shit at communication, she desperately wanted to pick his brain on the situation with Steve. Despite what he’d said at Dustin’s wedding, Steve had never told her how his reunion with Billy had panned out, and, while she wasn’t surprised, she also hadn’t bothered calling him up just to ask if he even went through with it; he was always so busy and, more than that, so skittish about such personal affairs. She’d almost written the entire incident off, but then she’d gotten a call around ten o’clock at night the following Friday after the wedding, and the mystery that it’d created had been on her mind ever since.

“Max,” Billy had said as soon as she’d picked up, completely uncaring that she’d already gone to bed like a rational person. “Do you have Steve Harrington’s phone number?”

Rubbing at her eyes, her frown had turned into a sly grin. She’d been all too ready to be cross with him, but that’d been before he’d said those magic words. “What, am I a telephone operator or something?”

“Shut up,” he’d said, without heat. “Number, now.”

Once she’d pulled out her contact book and had given it to him, he’d come close to hanging up, but surely he didn’t think she’d let him get away that easily.

“Steve told me he wanted you two to catch up,” she’d interjected, quick as a whip and twirling the cord of her old rotary phone out of anticipation. “Did that happen yet?”

“It’s going to,” he’d said brusquely, making her wonder exactly what that’d meant. It’d been at least thinly veiled confirmation that Steve really had contacted him, but that revelation had only confused her more. What exactly had they talked about if they hadn’t even bothered to exchange numbers? “Thanks,” he’d added as an afterthought, and then he’d hung up without another word.

Since then, she’d been burning with questions and looking for any reason whatsoever to draw the answers out of Billy, preferably in person so he couldn’t hang up on her again. Which led them back to the present, and she threw caution to the wind because of her deep desire to know everything.

“Well…” She kept her voice as casual as possible, which was absurdly difficult, because she was brimming with impatience. “What about calling Steve up and doing something with him? I’d bet money he won’t be busy, either.”

Billy, acting as if he hadn’t heard her, hunched forward to shuffle through some of the cups, wrappers, and sundries atop the coffee table. She watched as he produced a package of rolling papers and a snack-sized baggie of something dark and crumbled, and, when the realization clicked, her eyes went so wide they practically engulfed her face.

“Is that _weed_?”

Over the years, Billy hadn’t aged so much as he’d matured and developed, but his mischievous grin made him look distinctly seventeen again. It was a disorienting phenomenon, to say the least.

“Found my old stash under my bed,” he told her with no small amount of smugness, juggling the baggie in his hand and inspecting the contents through the plastic. He set it to the side, cleared off a corner of the table, and smacked one thin paper and a pre-rolled filter upon the not-so-clean surface. “It’s probably gone to shit, but how many times can you say you’ve smoked bud with a cop?”

“Thankfully, never,” a mesmerized Max gaped at him as he measured out roughly a third of a gram of decade-old cannabis and, before he closed the baggie again, threw in a pinch more for good measure. “You changed the subject.”

Focusing on nimbly rolling up the joint gave him a valid reason not to look her in the eye. “I did.”

“Is it so bad that I came over to check on you _and_ to grill you for info?”

“It’s nosy, at least,” he retorted, pressing the length of the paper to the tip of his tongue to activate the glue strip. “Unnecessary, at most.”

“What can I say?” she shrugged, sliding her flats off and tossing them to the side of the chair. Offhandedly, she glanced down and made a mental note to repaint her toenails; after a few months, the glittery burgundy polish had recently started to flake off around the edges. Her fingernails were newly fluorescent neon yellow, and she liked it, but maybe she’d coordinate both her hands and feet to something patriotic for the upcoming holiday. “I wanted to ask, like, two weeks ago. I’m just dying to know what happened between you two.”

“ _Mm_ ,” he hummed sarcastically, but he didn’t look irritated. “You never told me—just how’d you get swept up into this?”

“Dustin’s wedding.”

Billy looked at her blankly until she scrunched up her face and did a piss-poor imitation of Dustin purring, and then his face contorted into a heavy scowl. “Fuck, that little snot-nosed brat with the missing front teeth? Jesus, he was a _pain_ in my _ass_. Wouldn’t stop splashing or running around the pool, and every time he jumped off the diving board, he flipped me off.” He paused to think, eyes darting upwards. “I banned him for life. Might still be, I don’t know. I’m not there to enforce the rules anymore. I hope he is.”

She laughed now, both at Billy’s aggravation and the long-past memory of a red-faced Dustin yelling and stomping around on the other side of the fence as she and the other boys kept swimming. “Yep, that’s him. Banned or not, he doesn’t live here anymore, so it wouldn’t matter if he were.” Billy, now finished tamping down the contents and rolling the end shut, produced a lighter seemingly out of thin air and held it under the end until it produced a controlled burn. “Anyways, it was at his wedding earlier this month, on the first. Steve called me over apropos of nothing and asked for your number, and you know the rest.”

Still illuminated by the flame, some indiscernible emotion flickered across his face, and he didn’t know how lucky he was that she let that slide without mention. He tossed the lighter back onto the table, put his abominable creation to his lips, and, upon taking a deep inhale, his grimace was instantaneous. Instantly, he took the offending joint from his mouth and stretched his arm out across the table to hand it to her; by the time that he’d finally exhaled a furious plume, his expression was nothing short of repulsed. “Oh fuck.”

“That bad?” She asked, settling back in her chair and hesitatingly holding it between her index finger and thumb at a healthy distance. She hadn’t gone overboard with substance abuse like her college friends had, but she’d grown familiar enough with marijuana to know what was good was an acquired taste and what was bad was _bad_.

“It’s…uh,” he shook his head and smacked his lips. “Okay, maybe I should’ve left it under my bed. Let some rat find it and trip its balls off before it dies.”

Max raised her eyebrows, glancing at the joint still between her fingertips and mulling over calling his bluff; eventually, she figured, _eh, life is short_ , so she pressed it to her own lips and pulled. At the acrimonious tang and sudden horrendous burning in her throat, she made a face that matched Billy’s own.

“ _Jesus_ ,” she choked out, not even bothering to hold the smoke in her lungs for an effective high. “Oh, that’s rancid!”

He belly-laughed in solidarity, slumping back and folding his hands into his lap. “Maybe it won’t matter as much the higher we get.”

“The higher _you_ get,” she coughed, but she took another tiny inhale just to see if it would be as bad as the first puff—somehow, it was worse. All she could do was start praying that she hadn’t just smoked some mold or mildew, because an unexpected trip to the ER wasn’t exactly her idea of a Saturday afternoon. “I got stuff I need to do today.”

“Tell you what,” he drawled, scooting over on the couch and patting the seat of the other end for her benefit. “You sit here and smoke this disgusting weed with me, and I’ll tell you a secret. And I’m warning you,” he very seriously pointed at her, simultaneously using his index finger and pinky like devil’s horns, “it’s the craziest fucking thing that you’ll ever hear in your life.”

“Like what?” Her mouth still tasted like burnt garbage, but she managed to smirk at his theatrics. “That you’re gay? Too late for that one, buddy.”

He laughed again, freely, but a second later, he schooled his face back into its stoic state. “I mean it. If I find out you’ve told anyone else, I’ll arrest you myself.”

“You’ve got to stop using that,” she groaned, getting out of her chair and going over to the couch on the pads of her bare feet. “I’m here smoking an illegal narcotic with you as you squat in our old house. Try harder.”

“I’m serious. Not about the arrest part, no shit, but that it’s a big-ass secret, Maxine.”

She ungainly plopped next to him, pulled her feet up to sit cross-legged, and looked squarely in his face as soon as she’d settled in. Up close, there wasn’t an ounce of humor written on his features, and, in turn, she stilled from that iron solemnity. “Ah—wow, okay?”

“It’s really that big,” he emphasized as he plucked the joint from her fingers. She certainly didn’t fight him for it. “Spoiler alert, but it involves Steve.”

Max twisted her body perpendicular to his side. She didn’t want to sit here and gossip about one of her oldest friends, someone who’d been the big brother that she’d needed when Billy definitely hadn’t been, but she was utterly powerless to resist; from the way Billy was acting, it had to be something pretty damn wild. So, with butterflies erupting in her stomach and anticipation strumming through her veins, she didn’t hesitate to hold out a free hand.

“You’re smoking more of it than me,” she told him, matter-of-factly. “But you’ve got a deal. I won’t tell anyone, not even Ronnie, or so help me God.” And, for emphasis as well as humorous effect, “Amen.”

He examined her face in his most cop-like fashion, looking for even the most minute sign of her lying, only to nod briskly at the sincerity he found there. He put the joint in the crook of his mouth and firmly shook her hand with two pumps before setting it back onto his knee.

“Let me gather my bearings and start from the beginning.” Billy then took such a long, furious inhale that she leaned over to cringe directly in his face. “Hey,” he shrugged, smoke billowing out of his nose and mouth in voluminous clouds. “Imma need to be real high to get through this. Don’t judge.”

She waited as patiently as possible for him to start talking, but it did take more than a little while. In the meantime, they passed the joint back and forth, Max taking light drags in comparison to Billy’s heavy ones, until they were both resting their heads against the back of the couch and staring up at the hairline cracks in the plain ceiling.

“Okay,” his throaty, husky voice finally cracked out, the words as dry and grating as the marijuana itself. “You already know ’bout how Steve wanted us to bury the hatchet, ’cause we weren’t exactly friends in high school.”

“You threw a plate at his head and beat the shit out of him,” she added lazily. “But continue.”

“I threw a plate at his head and beat the shit out of him,” he repeated, nodding stiffly. “Anyways, the week after that little shit’s wedding, he called me up out of the blue and asked me to meet him at the quarry. Something about not him wanting to do it over the phone. I still don’t know what the fuck he was thinking.”

“The _quarry_? Why? What happened there?”

“I’m getting to that. When he got there, we talked for a few minutes, and then he revealed why he’d asked you about me in the first place, and I’m not going to lie—it freaked me out pretty badly, and I drove off. That’s why I never got his number, why I called you later that night for it.”

So far, this was starting to fill in all the gaps. She nodded him on, although it was difficult, considering that her mouth was the only part of her body that she could still somewhat properly control. The weed, although unrepentantly harsh, still clearly packed a punch, and she’d only smoked maybe a quarter of the joint; no doubt that Billy had much more tolerance than she did, because she didn’t know how he was still conscious, much less talking.

“So that Sunday, I called him up and invited him out to dinner the next night. Somewhere casual that we could talk over what we didn’t on Friday.”

“When was this again?” His timeline was all over the place, and her being high wasn’t exactly making it easy to keep the dates straight.

He exhaled in equal parts irritation and smoke. “Last Monday.”

“Gotcha, go on.”

“And we did, and we got to talking. Ended up in the parking lot and back on the subject that we started with at the quarry. He asked me for something, and…and I agreed to it,” he croaked. “Fuck, Max, I said _yes_.”

“What did you say yes to?” She whispered, hummingbird heart beating a little faster. _Sex? Drugs? Murder? A ménage-à-trois of all three? An actual ménage-à-trois?_

When Billy spoke, it was no louder than the distant hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

“Steve asked me to father his baby.”

Max instantly tried to sit up but, considering her bones had turned to cherry Jell-O, had to resort to lethargically rolling her head over and boring holes into the side of his face. “No fucking way.”

Disbelief aside, perhaps it was a testament to her drug-addled state at how oddly calm she felt about it; simply put, she’d never in her life felt so unruffled about something that she knew she should be. Any other time, she would’ve been bug-eyed and beside herself with ceaseless questions, and Billy seemingly had expected that as well.

“Why would I lie about that?” He countered, rotating his own head in the direction of her voice and blinking at the blank look on her face. “Y’know, you’re handling it a lot better than I did.”

“Well, yeah, I’m high as fuck right now, maybe ask me again in a few hours.” She pondered over his words as best as she could manage. “Why’d you say yes?”

“Seemed like the right thing to do,” he mumbled. “I’m never gonna be a dad, and Steve is so fucking lonely and wants one, like, yesterday. I figure I owe him.”

Max finally did sit up at that, albeit with great difficulty, because moving while under the influence felt similar to NASA astronauts training underwater to get a feel for zero gravity; on second thought, maybe it was completely, hilariously different from that, but it was the closest comparison that she could bother to think of right now. “You’re kidding me, right? Whatever happened to a good-old fashioned apology? You don’t need to give him a friggin’ _baby_ for what happened back when you were teenagers, Billy.”

“I’m not—it’s not just that.” Frustrated, he snuffed out the end of the spent joint onto the coffee table, leaving behind a ring of ashes but somehow no burn mark. Then again, it wouldn’t have mattered a lick if it had, because all of Neil’s worldly possessions were already forfeit; whatever didn’t sell was going to Goodwill or getting trashed. Speaking of which, Billy had very recently mentioned calling up the realtor that Hopper had recommended so that he could finally put this hovel on the market, and, with him being a man of business, that meant it must be happening sooner rather than later. “It’s pathetic, but if there’s anyone I’d do this for, it’s him.”

“Softy,” Max repeated, but it wasn’t teasing like it’d been before. She was genuinely touched by his unique display of compassion, and she lifted a slightly shaky hand to the cuff of his shoulder because of it. “Oh, Billy.”

“I know,” he said gruffly, but he leaned into her touch all the same. He’d been pricklier than ever about physical contact since Michael had broken his heart into pieces, and, although she couldn’t confirm it, she had the distinct impression that Billy hadn’t had the appetite to seek out casual intimacy just to fill the void that’d been left behind. Maybe that was why he now readily welcomed her platonic comfort instead of shaking her off, because he sadly had so little of it in his line of work and in the rest of his life—as that weren’t already depressing enough.

“Are you gonna stay in contact with them—him?” She quickly amended, even though it wasn’t a necessary change. The meaning was there anyways, firmly between the lines, regardless of utterance.

He merely shrugged. “Steve said he’d do occasional updates, and, whatever, maybe one day I could get him to send me some VHS tapes of the bigger events. But it’s not gonna be _my_ kid, even though it’ll be half me. Understand?”

“Can I hug you?” She asked suddenly. She wanted to leave him his small amount of dignity, but his closed-off tone didn’t quite hide his oozing sorrow and bitterness, and that made her want to be there for him even more, if only in the smallest way that she knew how. Although, with Billy, it was like taming a wild animal on edge: slow, non-threatening, verbalized gestures were the only way to approach consoling him, and, even then, it had a critically low success rate.

His glare was challenging for a mere second, but the already grounding presence of her fingers made him visibly yield; he didn’t have to nod for her to get the okay to bend forward and wrap her arms around his neck. Initially, he was so stiff, so mannequin-like, that he could’ve been lifeless if he didn’t run so hot, but she felt his shoulders infinitesimally relax in the minutes that trickled away.

He didn’t cry—it wasn’t that kind of moment—or hug back, but he did shakily exhale against her. She couldn’t see his face, but he sounded so lost when he asked, “Am I making a mistake?”

“No,” she said as confidently as possible, because he was in desperate need of every ounce of reassurance that she could possibly give. Deep down, she had her own reservations about how this was going to pan out, mainly because she didn’t know if Billy had it in him to walk away from his own flesh and blood like his mother had; it was inexcusable that she hadn’t taken Billy with her when she’d left his waste of space father, but she hadn’t, and Max could always see it in his eyes how much that abandonment still hurt him. To rub extra salt in the wound, for all his considerable faults, Neil had never left his kid behind—although, considering how he’d treated his son, Billy probably would’ve been better off if he had. Unfortunately, no matter the outcome, it was a conundrum in the making, one bound to reopen barely scabbed-over scars.

But Max would be there for him when the time came, and, as she ruminated over the situation and the sad facts of his lost childhood, it made her hug him just a little tighter. They’d been through too much over the years, and it’d taken them a long time and great lengths to go from hating each other’s guts to irrevocably having each other’s backs, but there was nothing that he could do now that would make her abandon or torment him like either of his shithead parents had. As kids, Billy had used to crudely mock the sentiment, but the fact of the matter was that they’d always been brother and sister, and they always would be. “No, you’re just changing.”

* * *

Every month, little telltale symptoms told Steve that his heat was, yet again, looming on the horizon. Usually, it started with him feeling fairly crummy, worn-out, and somewhat touchy for a day or two, then becoming considerably warmer and more concupiscent than usual for the better part of a week, but that really was the extent of it. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t forcibly bedridden in some sex-induced haze or feverishly gravitating to every alpha in a twenty-mile radius, as ludicrous as that sounded. While it had been nerve-wracking when he’d been younger and more inexperienced, times had changed; now, he was very accustomed to its cyclical nature, and it was manageable with routine medication and enough dedication to continue going about his daily life. If the Earth could keep spinning, then so could he, estrous cycle or not.

Before Steve had been born, his alpha father and beta mother had assumed that he would eventually inherit his father’s classification—which, although a common line of thinking, was completely inaccurate. Chance, not genetics, determined class, and anything seemingly proving otherwise was just a mere coincidence. At the very least, they hadn’t expected to know until the onset of puberty, but one single look at a red and screaming newborn Steve had dashed all their expectations right off the bat.

Apart from certain sexual aspects or standard biology, there weren’t that many differences between alpha and beta males or beta and omega females. It mostly came down to all-over-the-place hormones, inherent dominance or submission, or—in alphas’ cases—an annoying propensity for developing superiority complexes. Honestly, humanity was endlessly fortunate that there were more run-of-the-mill betas out there than the other classes combined, because it would be perpetual pandemonium if there were more alphas running around than not. Even so, hypotheticals aside, things about classes and genders were straightforward.

Well, _most_ things.

Of the six classes in total, only two were atypical enough to be detectable at birth: omega males and alpha females, the former of which oh-so-luckily involved Steve. In the medical world, they defined it as intersex—a male born with the partial or complete addition of traditionally female parts, and vice versa; even then, it could be tricky to differentiate, so the exact variant was only definable by an immediate post-birth exam and subsequent blood testing.

Needless to say, it was a complex and unique situation that was, unfortunately, seldom met without fear or judgement. There used to be a push to give alpha daughters sex-reassignment surgery very early on, but that’d been thankfully banned a few decades prior; as for omega sons, there was at least a _slightly_ similar outward appearance to other males, and intervention wasn’t deemed necessary as long as they hid it well. Case in point, Steve’s parents had tried their best to integrate him with other boys his age, and, when he’d finally reached puberty, he’d been on testosterone-based hormone-blocking suppressors from day one. Not that those were perfect: they neutralized pheromones and helped him physically pass a little more, but there was no way to stop the monthly heats, which, honestly, weren’t altogether that different from a non-omega’s menses. Conversely, alpha females could relate to the topsy-turvy nature: they could minimize aggression and the extra sexual arousal with estrogen-based blockers, but no pill could completely do away with nature. Ultimately, for both cases, things were what they were, and they required extra adaption, education, and deeper understanding in comparison to those that took normalcy for granted. _Blame it on biology_ , had been Steve’s middle school sex-ed teacher’s apt explanation, following it up with a nonplussed shrug of his shoulders before he’d moved on to the next subject.

And, at one point, Steve had used to, because adolescence was rough enough without an exponential increase in self-consciousness and shame being thrown into the mix. But his raging preteen hormones had eventually cooled off, and he’d become more comfortable in his own skin as time had marched on; it was just his reality that he didn’t align with everyone else, that he existed somewhere between polarities. Sure, it sometimes made things more complicated, and, sure, there were always going to be people who didn’t understand and were cruel about it—for example, the other kids back in elementary school or the prejudiced assholes at his father’s business—but he’d grown to accept it as a part of himself, and he wasn’t ashamed anymore. Steve knew he was a man, had never doubted that, and nobody could tell him any differently, although nothing was stopping him from identifying elsewise if he so wished; in his travels, he’d even met some fellow omegas that’d eschewed traditional gender roles entirely, pronouns and all, and it’d been profoundly refreshing to see others so freely accepting of themselves without fear of judgment or societal labels.

With all that being said, the last weekend of June found him wrapped up in a cotton sheet on his couch, nursing a mug of oolong tea, and watching early evening reruns of M*A*S*H. The two extra ibuprofen that he’d popped a half-hour ago, a last-ditch effort to alleviate his thudding headache and crampy, achy muscles, had finally started to kick in over the most recent commercial break, but there was only so much an over-the-counter drug could do. This was the first month off his blockers in a very long time, and he’d somehow forgotten just how much an unadulterated cycle utterly sapped him until he was right in the thick of it.

But he had more things on his mind besides his own pity party: ever since his heat had officially started yesterday, he’d been debating on when to call Billy. To his credit, Steve had continued his efforts to give him space over the last week or so, purely because he hadn’t wanted to bother him for no real reason, but that semi-patient mindset was gone now that he was fertile and feeling anxious to capitalize on it. Impatience aside, he did have ample time—it usually took about five days from beginning to end before the symptoms abated, before the window for conception closed for another month. So, as long as he moved quickly enough in the next few days, it was a small comfort that the already wasted twenty-four hours wouldn’t matter much in the long run.

Taking a swig of tea, he rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles and pointedly ignored the nearby cordless phone calling his name. He’d slept intermittently on the couch throughout the day, and, now that it was just a little after dusk, he wouldn’t be able to sleep again for a few hours. The television was a good distraction for only about five minutes at a time, because his eyes would be on the screen but his mind would start to wander, namely on what Billy was up to at that very moment—which was absurd, because there was a snowball’s chance in Hell that he’d even be willing to come over on such a short notice, anyways. Steve chalked it up to feeling miserable and thusly needing an outlet to take his mind off the discomfort, and he almost managed to convince himself that was the actual truth.

But the problem with one-track minds was that they often led to poor impulse control, and all he could do was scowl at himself when he finally leaned over the side of the couch to grab the phone from the end table. Annoyingly, he’d anticipated this moment of weakness, for, a little earlier, he’d laid the napkin with Billy’s number on it next to the receiver. He stared at it for a second, how it was just itching to enable his upcoming bad decision, and he felt torn between being grateful for not having to go get it and being cross with himself over his own lack of restraint. But he still snatched it up and, with the phone in one hand and the number in the other, proceeded to dial what was written there, shaking his head at himself all the while. As he waited for the ill-fated call to connect, he dropped the napkin to the coffee table and picked his mug back up so he could take some much-needed gulps; the second it went through, he swallowed hastily and opened his mouth to start speaking before he could lose his nerve, but the sound of an unexpected yet familiar voice on the other end left him stunned for more than a few seconds.

“Ah…Hargrove residence, how may I help you?”

“ _…Max?_ ”

“Steve,” she responded cheerfully. There were hurried whispers on the other end, and she broke away from the phone to say something unintelligible to them. Steve didn’t think for a second that it wasn’t Billy, and it made worry settle like a stone in the pit of his stomach. Here he was, feeling self-conscious about calling him to come over so he could donate soon; he didn’t consider that maybe, just maybe, Billy had been avoiding him on purpose. It was an intrusive thought, and it wasn’t a welcome one.

“Um,” he cleared his throat and took another sip of tea for good measure. He let the sheet drop from his shoulders to his lap, because, even though he was involuntarily shivering, his insides felt like they were on fire. “Billy’s there, right?”

“Yup,” she confirmed. More whispering. “But he’s a little…uh, _interspersed_ at the moment.”

Steve momentarily quirked an eyebrow at Max’s weirdly jittery tone and unintentional malapropism, both of which were very unlike her. “Uh, ‘indisposed’?”

She tittered a little. “Oops, thanks, Merriam-Webster.”

“Okay, first off,” he exhaled, leaning forward to carefully set his mug back onto the coffee table. It was scarlet red and branded with the University of Chicago emblem, one of the many alumni freebies that Dustin always foisted off onto him whenever he came to visit in person; Steve didn’t care—he liked using it solely for that stupid reason. “How drunk are you, and, secondly, do you need me to drive you home?”

What he didn’t add was that he wanted to die just imagining getting off the couch, putting actual clothes on top of his oversensitive, heated skin, and possibly driving across town to wherever Billy’s temporary residence was, but he’d do it if she needed, come Hell or high water.

“’M not drunk.”

He rolled his eyes, and it showed in his tone. “Uh-huh. Sure. Listen, can you put Billy on so I can ask him something? Then you two can go back to having your…fun.”

She conceded with a quick, “ _Mm_ ,” and he heard Billy’s own grunt in the background as the phone presumably exchanged hands.

“Billy,” he went ahead and said, once he heard faint snuffling that he took as indication that Billy was on the line. Sure enough, he received another grunt, as well as more background whispers. If Steve were still on his blockers and could feasibly manage it, he’d probably be driving over there right now just to get an accurate depiction of their debauchery compared to what he was currently imagining inside his head. “What are you doing?”

“Gettin’ high again,” was his response, and Steve had no clue as to whether he was joking or not. Initially, Billy’s voice seemed more coherent than Max’s, but then there was a slight slur at the end of his words, and Steve could hear his glazed-over eyes from here.

He forced himself to pay it no mind, because things were going to get very serious in the next few seconds, and he needed to stay focused. Death-gripping the phone in anticipation, he managed, “Are you busy…tomorrow?”

“Why?” Billy asked baldly, and then one sobering, terribly awkward second later, “Oh.”

Steve rubbed at the unyielding pressure lodged in his temples, its sudden resurgence courtesy of him furiously wishing for the ground to swallow him up right here, right now. “Yeah.”

“I’ll be over in the morning.” And after a breathy laugh from Max, one loud enough that even Steve could hear, he stressed, “Early.”

“I mean, I’ll be here all day, so there’s no rush. Take your time.” Steve tried to sound as unflappable as possible, but he probably sounded as cool as Billy did sober, so he considered it a wash. Without needing any prompt, he gave Billy his address and specific apartment number, but when he started to give him some basic directions to his side of town, Billy immediately nixed his help. _Typical._ “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Again, seriously, don’t worry about getting here at, like, daybreak. I’m probably gonna sleep in, and it sounds like you’ll need to, too.”

Billy firmly repeated, “I’ll be over in the morning,” and that was that. Steve expected to hear a dial tone as soon as he’d finished speaking, but he just grit out, “You wanna talk to Max again?”

He didn’t, not because he didn’t have anything else to say to her right now, but because she seemed too tipsy to be in the mood for conversation in the first place. “Uh, no, not really…just tell her I said to get home safe.”

“Understood.” And then Billy did hang up.

 _So that’s that_ , Steve realized. It seemed awfully momentous: tomorrow was _the_ day, and, as long as his uninterrupted long-term usage of blockers hadn’t rendered him infertile over time without his knowledge, it was theoretically going to change everything.

He knew it would hit him once there was more tangible evidence—specifically, the sobering reality of an infant in his arms—but for now, he just debated the merits of getting up off the couch and topping off his now-tepid tea. _Baby steps_ , his brain supplied, and he thinly smiled at the unintentionally apt word choice before getting up with a quiet groan to go boil some fresh water.


	5. Chapter 5

_June 25, 1995_

Billy, damn him, didn’t lie. Five minutes after eight in the morning, Steve abruptly awoke to the sound of someone mashing his doorbell. Startled, he poked his head out from the sheet that he’d been burrowed under, and it only took milliseconds for his brain to catch up. “ _Shit._ ”

Considering that he hadn’t strayed far from the couch for the better part of thirty-six hours, last night had been as exceedingly lazy as ever. After his odd phone call with Billy, he’d made dinner— _could a Fig Newton and a handful of pretzels count as dinner?_ —and then had spent the remainder of the evening aimlessly flipping around channels; ultimately, he’d ended up watching some arbitrary televised marathon of Meg Ryan movies, specifically _When Harry Met Sally…_ and _Top Gun_. The continuous noise had kept him from feeling too alone with his thoughts, at least, until about three or four in the morning, when he’d ironically fallen into a fitful slumber halfway through _Sleepless in Seattle_.

Despite making a point of telling Billy that he’d be here all day, Steve seriously debated pretending that he wasn’t home, but he didn’t have the chance to: because, just then, Billy decided to start loudly calling his last name as if he was determined to wake up the whole apartment building. Steve’s body might’ve felt even achier than it had yesterday—a combined result of the onset of his heat and sleeping all cramped up—but he was a flash of long limbs when he jumped off the couch and flew to the front door; in his haste, he was already furiously shushing Billy before he’d actually opened it.

“The _neighbors_ ,” he hissed, but his words faded away at the sight of Billy on his doorstep, the early morning sunlight haloing his striking silhouette. Instead of wearing something casual like a t-shirt and jeans, Billy had gone all out with a black button-down half-tucked into a pair of matching chinos, as well as a stark white undershirt to cover his taut chest, because the last button on his shirt was the only reason that it wasn’t completely open and billowing in the breeze. As for the rest of his ensemble, the regular range of jewelry was still on display, his immaculately coiffed honey-blond hair looked as equally polished as his brogues, and the black Ray-Bans from the quarry had even reappeared, the contrast making his already-stony gaze look somehow more resolute.

 _You’re just here to donate your goddamn semen_ , Steve immediately wanted to yell at him. _You’re not supposed to look like you just stepped off Rodeo Drive. Fuck, I’m in the same ratty-ass pajamas from Friday night._

That feeling of annoyance was seemingly mutual: Billy hadn’t been smiling to begin with, but he only scowled further at Steve’s attempts to silence him. “Harrington,” his jaw worked, “what part about ‘early’ didn’t you understand?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Steve groaned, stepping out of the doorway and to the side so that he could push past him. “So sorry to inconvenience you.” But Billy had already moved into the main room to freely scope out the place without permission, leaving Steve, not entirely surprised at his gumption, to close the door while muttering sardonically, “Please, do come in.”

Choosing to keep it unlocked for the time being, he turned on his heel to follow the distinct smell of Billy’s aftershave, which led him to the kitchen, where the man of the hour was currently taking it upon himself to plug the drip coffee maker into the wall. He’d already set his sunglasses and car keys onto the laminate countertop, and, as he leaned away from the maker to grab two white mugs from a nearby hanging rack, it left Steve torn between blinking the sleep out of his eyes and staring at the hurricane that’d just entered his solitary living space. Billy, despite never having been here before, was acting as if this was just part of some nonexistent run-of-the-mill routine; the brash, unyielding confidence that he exuded in nearly any situation was something that Steve would never fully understand, but nonetheless greatly envied.

“Supplies are in the cabinet by your head,” he offered, sliding into one of the two stool chairs at the island counter. Initially, Billy gave no indication that he’d registered his words, but he reached up a handful of seconds later and grabbed a medium-roast canister from the shelf, coolly, as if it’d been his own idea. He made himself busy by using the included plastic scoop to measure a respectable amount into the machine, and Steve watched his every move. “So…late night?”

Billy turned his head halfway, peering out at him through his eyelashes, and snapped the canister lid shut. “Could say the same thing to you.”

“You could,” Steve agreed, folding his hands onto the cool countertop. “Not that you’d want to hear about that. You don’t look in the mood for small talk.” Beneath the kitchen’s bright overhead lighting, he absently noted that Billy’s button-down wasn’t black like his pants, but instead a very dark navy; he didn’t know what to do with that information, but he filed it away all the same.

“I don’t care,” Billy grunted, jabbing at a couple of buttons when the coffee maker failed to signal that it was working. “Anything’s better than sitting here in silence until…” He trailed off, suddenly at a loss for words.

Steve quietly finished for him. “Until.”

Billy nodded tersely, eyes trained on the machine and still fiddling around with controls that he shouldn’t be. His body language broadcast his progressing frustration with crystal clarity, and, just when Steve started to say something about it, Billy suddenly snapped and roughly smacked the side of the plastic housing. “This little— _fuck_ —this shit is fucking _impossible_ —”

“Hey, here, let me.” Steve slipped out of his seat and moved next to him, positioning the machine a little more in his own direction so he could properly see to hit the right buttons. Thanks to his experience and subsequent deft approach, it started to chirp and gurgle practically on demand, and he felt triumphant for only a mere second; now up close and personal, he caught sight of Billy’s stupidly sharp getup in comparison to his own, and he felt a fresh wave of self-consciousness over how scruffy he looked and probably smelled. He’d meant to take a shower last night, but the feel of water on his hands alone was already too much to bear, so he hadn’t forced it—although now, he really wished that he had.

Being freed of his coffee duties left Billy the opportunity to be extra perceptive, and he jutted a chin out in Steve’s immediate direction, almost accusatorily. “You were asleep.”

 _An astute observation, Sonny Crockett._ “Uh, yeah,” he laughed nervously, gesturing to his white-and-red University of Chicago t-shirt—yet another gift from Dustin—pilled shorts, and bare feet. Billy wouldn’t know this, but the lattermost was completely unlike him; he always preferred to wear socks around the house, even if they did make the hardwood too slippery at times, but he’d been just too hot over the last few days to consider anything other than the strict basics. “ _This_ doesn’t give you a good idea? It’s all I can stand to wear right now. Heats suck.”

“What does that have to do with what you’re wearing?”

Steve’s face scrunched up in bewilderment. “Really? It’s like, biology, dude. You didn’t pay attention in sex ed or something?”

He didn’t know why that broke the tension, but it did: Billy’s sour mood evaporated in a second, and his face split into a lewd grin. Steve wasn’t someone who got weak at the knees easily, but he felt nearly short of breath beholding those smoldering eyes and pearly white teeth inset in that dimpled Cheshire Cat leer; he chalked it up to being an involuntary symptom of being in heat, because it was only natural that he might feel _some_ attraction to an admittedly good-looking alpha male standing in his kitchen. If there were perhaps some other explanation, he didn’t want to know, and he avoided thinking about the specifics any further.

“What can I say?” Billy almost purred. “I’m more of a _hands-on_ learner.”

Dizziness notwithstanding, Steve couldn’t suppress his sudden laugh. “Ooh, that’s pretty good. _Seinfeld_ ain’t got shit on you.” It would be a few minutes before the machine finished dripping into the coffee pot, so he leaned away and went back to sit at the island; also, he needed some space between him and Billy so that his heart could maybe stop hammering in his chest, and any small amount would do. “To answer your question, everything’s kinda…oversensitive right now. My skin, like, aches, so that’s why I’m wearing these really thin pajamas. I also get overheated easily, but that’s either self-explanatory or just a coincidence.” He mulled over his next words, because he didn’t want to sound whiny, but he was glad for a sympathetic-adjacent ear and intended to capitalize on it. “My heats always drain the shit out of me, so, at best, I’m just running on empty for a few days. At worst, I’m on the fucking floor, and that’s _with_ blockers. You could say things right now are a little more…intense, definitely weirder, without them.”

Billy crossed his arms and propped a hip against the edge of the counter. “Yeah, I can tell. This place reeks.”

“That’s not—” Steve flashed wild eyes around the room. His first instinct was to look at the trash, but there was nothing in there other than some wadded-up paper towels and plastic wrappers—certainly nothing odorous. He hadn’t cooked at all in the last few days, and the worst that he personally would smell of was old sweat, probably. Hopefully. “What d’you mean?”

Now Billy looked perplexed. “I can smell you,” he explained, brow creasing at Steve’s obliviousness. “Your pheromones. It’s everywhere, in the air and on the walls and coming from your clothes and skin. Like a bomb went off in here.”

“Ah,” Steve croaked. He’d been so busy trying to administer some desperately needed self-care that he’d forgotten all about that other aspect. In hindsight, it’d been the entire reason that his parents had shoved those pills down his throat before he’d been old enough really to understand why. “Sorry?”

Billy just raised his eyebrows at him. For an awkward beat, the only sound between them came from the coffee machine; it’d started to make little dribbling noises a minute ago, and it was already close to filling a quarter of the pot.

Steve always talked too much when he was nervous, and today, unfortunately, was no exception; in other words, he continued his runaway train of thought with as much subtlety as an actual train. “It’s just that, with blockers, it’s been ages since I’ve really had to worry about it. Honestly, the last time was probably when I was traveling abroad, ran out, and couldn’t refill my prescription for a few months, and even that was, like, the first time since puberty. So, yeah, blame it on me going off ’em. Well, that and I need to take a shower anyways, but even that probably won’t help much if it’s hormonal.” He stopped momentarily when a burning question made its way into the forefront of his brain. “What does it smell like?”

“…That’s a weird fucking question,” Billy stated, blinking and looking at him funnily now. Steve knew it was, but curiosity killed the cat—or, in his case, embarrassed the clueless weirdo.

He would’ve backtracked, but Billy miraculously recovered enough to seemingly take it in stride, reaching up to tap his thumb to his chin as he tried to pinpoint it down and articulate it into words. “It’s…disgustingly sweet,” was his answer. “Like flowers…at a funeral. I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s just a lot. Overwhelming.”

Anyone else would’ve taken that as an adequate explanation, but not Steve. And, only because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut for the literal life of him, “Do all heats smell like that?”

“I think I’ve already made it clear that I don’t even know what heats are really like,” he retorted. “Much less how other omegas smell when they’re off their blockers. As far as I know, that’s just yours.”

The odd, almost reproachful look on Billy’s face made Steve suddenly feel bashful, and he looked down to pick at a hangnail on his left thumb. “If it’s too much for you to handle, I can go lock myself in my room or something until you leave. It won’t go away, but it’ll cut down on it, at least.”

“I can handle it,” Billy said firmly. He’d quickly done a one-eighty, going from looking uncomfortable to holding his head high and stressing his every word, as if for both his and Steve’s sake. “Seriously. I don’t know how many experiences you’ve had with alphas, but I’m not some damn cartoon dog floating in the air following little hearts. But if you’re gonna go out, that’ll be the first thing anyone’s gonna notice. I could even sorta smell it just outside your door.”

“God, that’s embarrassing,” Steve muttered. He’d forgotten to plan accordingly, so he had a hunch that he’d be taking an emergency personal day tomorrow and Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday, too, just to be safe.

In an eerily accurate impression of Steve from just a few minutes ago, Billy raised a lip and sneered, “‘It’s like, biology, _dude_.’” And then he gave a dry chuckle at his own joke.

Steve didn’t join in, but the corners of his frowning mouth twitched. “Very funny.”

Billy’s short burst of humor faded away as fast as it came, and he looked away now, eyes glued on the white drapes pulled over the kitchen window. It was opaque, but the morning sun’s faint glow peeked through the fabric weave. “I always thought you were a beta,” he said quietly, carefully.

“When?” Steve asked, puzzled. This was news to him: back then, he didn’t like to make it obvious, but the signs were always there if someone had bothered to look for them. “In high school? Other kids knew, figured you did, too. Tommy never ratted on me?”

“No,” Billy grit out, clearly not enthused to be admitting this lapse of seemingly public knowledge. “He didn’t. I didn’t even know until the quarry.”

Steve nodded faintly, mystified that he’d managed to drop _two_ bombs on him that day, apparently. “Huh, well, that’s surprising. I guess that goes to show what blockers can do, man. Very effective.”

“But you didn’t seem—” Billy began, and then he stopped himself. He might as well have said it, because Steve already knew what he was trying to get at, and his brain had already filled in the unspoken words for him. _You didn’t seem like an omega._ “Didn’t you used to date a girl back in the day? Ol’ what’s-her-face, Nancy Wheeler?”

“…Yeah?” He was inwardly surprised that Billy had not only remembered her name, but that he’d refrained from defaulting to some vulgar and-slash-or misogynistic moniker in place of it. Perhaps it was progress or a consequence of maturity, but Steve got a sense that, either way, Billy was erring on the side of caution.

“So?” Billy asked, gesturing with his hands and still not completely meeting Steve’s eyes. “She didn’t care?”

“Why would she?”

When Billy deliberately didn’t respond, Steve wanted to say, _I’ve got a dick, dude, just not like yours. And even if I didn’t, there’s other ways to have sex with a girl. Sheesh._

The little _ding_ from the machine broke the growing tension of their back-and-forth, and, in an instant, Billy was pouring scorching hot coffee into the two mugs that he’d previously set out.

“I don’t want to see you even try to drink that fucking lava for at least a few minutes,” Steve warned, getting out of his seat yet again to move towards the refrigerator. Glancing at him sideways, he didn’t miss Billy’s toothy little smirk, but he did ignore it. “You want any cream or sugar?”

“Nah, unnecessary liquid calories.”

Steve fished around the top shelf as Billy brought both mugs over to the island; he took a seat next to Steve’s stool of choice and watched him approach, pour a generous amount of half-and-half into his own drink, and then loop back around to put the carton away. Shaking his head, Billy gave an aborted snort. “God, if I didn’t get addicted when I was a rookie trying to stay awake during long shifts, I wouldn’t even bother with caffeine.”

Closing the refrigerator door again, Steve turned on his heel and fixed him with a guilty stare. “Fuck. I’m a bad host. I have water or Coke, too, if you’d prefer? Or tea?”

Billy was currently making a big deal out of blowing on the surface of his coffee, probably just for Steve’s sake, and he paused so he could snort again. “What, that pussy dried grass shit? I’m good. I’d rather just drink plain-ass boiled water.”

Steve pressed a hand to his temple. “Y’know, that’s something the old Billy Hargrove would’ve said,” he remarked, only for his voice to grow a little less sarcastic and a little more wistful. “Sometimes I forget you’re really him, maybe because you’ve so clearly got your shit together when he didn’t.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Harrington.” But he half-smiled and crooked his silver-ringed pinky at him over the rim of his mug. “I’m still me.”

“ _Mm-hmm_ ,” Steve rolled his eyes, but the gesture was more good-natured than exasperated. He reached into a nearby drawer, pulled out a spoon, and joined him at the island. “No, you’re not.”

A minute or two later, he was still busy stirring his steaming coffee when Billy stupidly up and decided that the present was as good a time as any to take his first sip. And, for Steve, that meant wincing in sympathy at Billy’s unrestrained grimace and subsequent move to covertly spit some burning liquid back into the mug. He didn’t laugh or say anything, because Billy would no doubt have little feeling in his tongue for the next few days, and that was already ‘I told you so’ enough.

Apparently, the sudden bout of pain had shocked him back into reality, for his gaze now flitted around the room as if he was wondering how, out of all the places in the world, he’d ended up in Steve Harrington’s kitchen. “Not to end this little kumbaya session early,” he bit out, and Steve just _knew_ that every inch of Billy’s mouth was beyond seared, yet he somehow played it off as well as anyone could else feasibly manage. “But you got a plan for what you need me to do here? Or,” he winked, quite forcibly, “did you decide to do it the old-fashioned way?”

“Keep dreaming,” Steve told him flatly, pushing his mug forward so it wouldn’t spill as he stood up. “That won’t be necessary.”

He left Billy all alone in the kitchen for a few seconds, popping into his room to grab something out of a plastic bag marked with a logo of a local medical supply store. When he stalked back in with it in hand, Billy looked fleetingly relieved; it didn’t occur to Steve until that very moment that Billy had thought he’d offended him with the harmless innuendo, and that self-awareness was kind of touching. It was certainly something that he’d learned in the last decade they’d been apart.

“Your part’s simple,” Steve declared, slapping the empty medical plastic cup onto the counter next to their drinks. “Here, go have fun.”

Billy picked it up and tossed it around in his hands. “Seriously?” He snickered, examining how the little yellow lid screwed on. “This is all it takes?”

“Like I just said, your part is simple. Jacking off doesn’t exactly require top-of-the-line equipment.” That earned him a soft laugh from Billy, and it warmed some of the frigid dread that’d taken hold in his chest. He wanted this, but it was still a big leap, and nerves were reasonably high. “I’m the one that has to worry about the rest, like handling it right and following the specific directions.”

Case in point, he’d left the instructions, syringe, and saline in his bedroom; they were untouched and, therefore, sterile, and he didn’t need Billy playing around with them or sticking them in places where they’d cease to be. As lovely as that thought was, it was an entirely rational decision on his part.

“Alright, whatever. Not that I need them, but you got any mags around here or something? Could do a two-for-one deal, if you catch my drift.” He winked again, and it was more salacious than before, because he’d parted his mouth and dipped his tongue past those ever-pink lips.

It was worth a try, but it didn’t work on Steve. He was suddenly too nervous at the prospect of doing the insemination correctly to let Billy get under his skin. “What a shame I didn’t get you a bucket,” he stated dispassionately. “And since I’m not a twelve-year-old boy, no. Hugh Hefner’s not making any money off me anymore.”

Billy’s eyes lit up like blue searchlights. “ _Anymore_ ,” he repeated delightedly, licking his lips again. “What, let me guess, did ya get them just to read the articles?”

Pressed up against the edge of the island, Steve folded his arms and, on a whim, openly smirked at him. “I was a ‘get my money’s worth’ kind of kid, if that answers your question.”

“Centerfolds?”

Steve grinned openly now, both at the lewd memories and at Billy’s very apparent interest in them. “Nothin’ but.”

“Nice,” Billy whistled lowly, grinning back. Once the moment had passed, he scooted out of his chair and palmed the cup. “Well, I’m off to see the wizard. Don’t wait up.”

Exasperated, Steve pinched the bridge of his nose, and he only realized that he’d left something unaddressed as soon as Billy had sauntered out of the kitchen. “Hey, bathroom’s down the hall to your left.”

Almost comically, the top of Billy’s head popped back into view. “Who said I was doing it in the bathroom?”

“Me,” Steve said shortly. “The person that doesn’t want to have to wash your mess from my bedding today.”

“Jesus Christ,” Billy snarked, pulling away. His next words floated in from further down the hall. “You’d think I’d know how to aim at this point.”

“You’d think,” Steve called back, but he hadn’t stopped smiling.

The door shut with a distant _click_ , and that left him to his own devices for however long it would take Billy to finish, which was an awkward, horribly dirty thought that he didn’t want to linger on. His coffee was still too hot to even look at, much less attempt to drink like the preemptive idiot currently masturbating in his bathroom had, so he went to dig out a box of Frosted Flakes and some chilled almond milk. Maybe it was just that he was on edge, but he thought he kept hearing faint little noises, and, suddenly, he didn’t want to be anywhere remotely near where the deed was taking place. He lifted his spoon from his coffee and brought his filled cereal bowl and a napkin to the living room, where the television was still lowly playing from last night, and he forced himself to turn on CNN and focus on it like any normal person almost in their thirties probably should. Apart from the rolling text bar of headlines at the bottom of the screen, he’d already missed the actual news; right now, some blonde-haired reporter with a plastic grin of shockingly white teeth was going on and on about something Clinton was expected to do this coming week, and Steve couldn’t care less. He’d voted last November as he always did, but that was purely out of civic duty and subsequently the extent of his interest in politics.

About ten minutes later, he was idly chasing some errant soggy corn flakes around with his spoon when he heard the bathroom door distantly slam open. Between the television and his makeshift breakfast, he’d actually managed to get distracted enough that it startled him; he repositioned himself on the couch as if he were about to get caught for something bad that he hadn’t actually done, and, all things considered, that little role reversal was humorous.

For some reason or another, there was a slight delay between the sound of the door and Billy making himself known. Steve wondered if he’d gone to the kitchen, expecting to find him still sitting there and waiting patiently, and, when that hadn’t panned out, he’d momentarily taken the opportunity to imbibe some of his now-cooler coffee. That exact suspicion was confirmed with Billy’s unhurried entrance into the living room, sunglasses hanging off his unbuttoned shirt, with his white mug in one hand and the medical cup—its contents sickeningly obvious, even from here—in the other.

In addition to his wolfish grin, his face was noticeably sweaty and flushed when he strolled past the couch and smartly smacked the cup onto the coffee table. “Special delivery,” he announced, chortling at the disgusted look on Steve’s face. _You did not just bring that shit out here to put on my_ table _, are you serious?_ “We good here?”

Steve set aside his bowl of now only milk and, using his napkin, picked up the sickeningly warm cup with two fingers like a claw machine. He’d have to clean the tabletop and the bathroom sink later, because god only knew if Billy had washed his hands afterwards. “Unless you want to stay and watch,” he snorted, not making eye contact, too busy staring down at the encapsulated contents. “Yeah, you’re free to go.” And then the gravity of the situation properly struck him, and he realized in a start just how much Billy had done for him and what it meant to be currently holding what he had in his hands; it made him go somber and acutely remember just how appreciative he really was. “Thanks, Billy.”

Billy’s levity disappeared as quickly as Steve’s humbleness had come. “Don’t mention it,” he muttered, and, from his gruff tone, that clearly meant both ways. He moved to walk away, because there really wasn’t much else left to do after all was said and (literally) done.

That is, until the television suddenly decided to air a local commercial for the annual Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza atop the hill overlooking the Hawkins Centennial Park, and an insidious idea, one that’d popped into Steve’s head earlier in the week as he’d tried to fall sleep, suddenly returned with a fiery passion.

“Hey,” he cleared his throat, stopping Billy in his tracks. “Before you go…god,” he hissed at himself, still clutching the cup and wildly looking between it and Billy as if he was trying to decipher if this was some sort of topsy-turvy, upside-down version of reality. “This might be weird, but…”

“Weirder than you holding a jug of my jizz that you’re gonna go shove up somewhere as soon as I leave?”

Steve laughed silently, but two reddish splotches had appeared on his cheeks of their own accord. “No, impossible. I just…don’t know what you’re doing then, but do you have any plans for the Fourth?”

An affronted look flashed onto Billy’s face, indicating that this was either a secretly sore topic or just one that shouldn’t have been broached at all. Maybe both, if he were lucky.

“Are you kidding me?” Billy asked, frowning and setting his free hand on his hip.

Doubling down, Steve cracked, “Don’t tell me you’re already throwing some clandestine barbecue.”

“What about all your little nerdlets?” He scoffed, but he couldn’t quite hide his discomfiture. “Max already told me she’s going to Lake Michigan, but aren’t the rest of you all chummy on holidays?”

Steve shrugged. “I mean, I’ll see a few of them, but we’re putting off another big bash until Labor Day. We usually only all get together a few times a year, so we tend to make those moments count.”

Billy digested that for a minute, even took a long drink for good measure, and he let him. The morning light was starting to trickle past his window shades, and the room was progressively getting brighter by the second; it was the same sunrise that he took for granted every day, but, with someone else there to share in it, it was somehow more picturesque than it’d ever been.

“Whatcha have in mind?”

Hopes buoyed, Steve gestured around his place, namely at the VHS player and the extensive collection of tapes at the bottom of the television cabinet. “I was thinking about having a marathon of some patriotic-adjacent American movies—like _Red Dawn_ or, fuck, _Jaws_ —and, once it gets dark, going to watch the fireworks. I already know I’m going to be alone most of the day, so I just figured you would be, too.” He shrugged again. “No offense.”

Billy was now scratching indolently at his rolled-up sleeves with his one hand, and his eyes were far away as he spoke. “I need to check with Jim to see if he needs someone to hold down the fort, but…” He stopped to screw up his face into something begrudging. “I guess it’d be better than sitting around at Neil’s place like a fat chick on prom night. That and getting high all alone and hearing all the explosives would probably freak me out anyways.”

“Wait—” Steve held up a palm, gaping openly at Billy. “—you weren’t joking about that last night?”

His all-encompassing grin returned, and he set his almost-empty mug on the coffee table. “Later, Harrington.”

Steve also hesitantly set the medical cup back down, specifically atop his used napkin, and got up from the couch to trail after him, awkwardly stopping by the end table in the alcove to the right of his front door. He kept his briefcase and planner there, as well as his keys in a tiny wicker basket in the corner, and a little piece of wrinkled paper now conveniently caught his eye amid the various silver fragments and the black plastic key fobs.

“Oh, hey, one more thing.” He moved his house key aside to pluck it from the basket. “I’ve got something for you here.”

His hand on the doorknob, Billy whirled around with an incensed glare; his eyes had gone hard as ice. “If it’s _money_ —”

Steve held his hands up and splayed them out, excluding his left thumb and index finger currently pinching the slip of paper. “It’s not, believe me, I got the message last time. _Here_ ,” he shook the scrap lamely in Billy’s direction. “Last week at the diner…fuck, just take it.”

Billy’s demeanor relaxed, but his face was frozen, and the lines between his brows were still indented. “Don’t need it. I already got your number from Max.”

“It’s not mine!” Steve blurted. “It’s from that waitress, the one from last Monday. She accosted me after you left.”

“Oh.” Then, bemused, “…Why didn’t you just throw it away?”

Steve yanked at Billy’s wrist and shoved it into his open, warm hand. Billy made a small squawking noise and immediately tensed up, but Steve didn’t care if that was crossing some line; he was sick of waving it in Billy’s face and of him not taking the hint. “’Cause she asked nicely,” Steve snapped, not as annoyed with Billy as he was cross at himself for having brought it up in the first place. “And I don’t know exactly what you’re into, but I figured you could, y’know, use a ‘distraction’, if you catch my drift.” He even went as far as using finger quotes to emphasize his point.

Billy’s hand, the one holding the paper, flexed and twitched. “From what?”

“Uh…” Steve’s own eyebrows deepened, and he rolled his eyes and head and lifted his hands in a gesture that really didn’t need any explanation. Fortunately, Billy seemed to take the hint, for he shoved the slip into a pant pocket and forcibly quirked a corner of his mouth.

“Good point,” he said, but his calm was disingenuous. He then pulled the doorknob open, and, once he’d stepped out of it, he threw over his shoulder, “Later.”

“Later,” Steve echoed, hearing him faintly go down the short flight of stairs and staring at his retreating figure strut back to the open parking lot. He made sure to close and lock his front door before Billy could get into the driver’s seat of his truck and look up to see Steve watching him from beyond the stair landing, because that level of embarrassment would be far too much for him to handle in one day.

Now all alone again, Steve leaned against the wood and breathed out heavily, cereal sitting like a rock in his stomach. He wanted to go over every little social indiscretion and faux pas that he’d made and to properly self-flagellate for them, but there was no time to waste: the longer that he left Billy’s ejaculate sitting out to cool, the more it wouldn’t be viable.

Willing himself to get to work, he returned to the living room to retrieve the notorious sample and then made his way to his bedroom, somewhere that he could draw the curtains and stretch out and get comfortable with his own shame for a while. Atop the dresser, he grabbed the plastic bag from earlier and dumped its contents out onto his comforter; the cup, although tightly screwed, went onto his nightstand for safekeeping. He’d already opened the rest of the kit a few days earlier, and he’d read the instructions several times at this point, poring over them as he ate dinner or relaxed after work. While he knew the steps like the back of his hand, he didn’t see a problem in running through them once more in preparation for the actual event, if only for posterity’s sake— _no pun intended_ , he thought wryly.

When the time came to uncap the cup, the inside contents were exactly as expected, except for the volume: there was somehow even far more of the gelatinous goop than was actually necessary. Steve shook his thoughts away and powered through, although, truthfully, it wasn’t so much disgusting as it was fascinating; it was more the odd reality of what he was doing that was almost too much to bear. Even so, he went through each step with more consideration than anything else he’d ever shown, from adding the saline solution to make it easier to get as much sperm as possible into a needleless syringe, to tapping out the lingering bubbles to prevent a dangerous air embolism.

And all that was left was to get onto the bed, lie back, and quite literally take the plunge. With pillows propping his hips up and his long legs against his headboard, he took a deep breath and used his free hand to slide both his underwear and sweatpants down. When the deed was complete—the directions had said to inject _slowly_ , and Steve’s fingers had started to cramp from complying—he set the syringe to the side and placed his hands back between his legs. In addition to recommending getting into a position where he could remain motionless for at least a half an hour, the directions had advised him to orgasm, because it would create something called a cervical dip, and, in short, it would speed up sperm travel and aid in absorption rate. Mumbo jumbo aside, he just needed to get off, and so he did.

It was probably as erotic as Billy’s own masturbation session was, which was to say, absolutely not at all. And the second his name crossed Steve’s mind, he hissed in shame; it was already bad enough to be here, artificially inseminating himself with Billy’s sperm, but to think of him as he touched himself to climax was just crossing the line. Still, in the recesses of his mind, the thought of those red-hot, icy-blue eyes trained on him, and only on him, made Steve want to self-immolate. When he came, it was an undignified mess that resembled nothing of Billy’s own, but nonetheless counted as a satisfying completion.

Once he’d properly returned to Earth, he turned his head to the side and found he’d only managed to burn off about seven minutes; so, he just closed his eyes and rested there, still panting and sticky, waiting until he could get up and take a much-needed shower and then maybe go back to sleep, this time in his actual bed. He’d already told himself not to get his hopes up for at least a few weeks, however, he was already feeling anxious less than ten minutes in. He had no idea how he was going to manage a full month of waiting until his heat either came or didn’t, and only then would that fork in the road decide whether he could take a pregnancy test to find out if something was happening or if Billy would have to come over again. Speaking of the devil, he was suddenly rapturously glad that he’d bothered to ask him to hang out on the Fourth, because Steve had a feeling that innocuous distractions were going to be his lifeline for the indeterminate future.

Pressing a hand to the skin of his right hip and swallowing heavily, he just hoped that it was worth all the effort.

* * *

_July 2, 1995_

Sunday evening found Max in her bedroom, surrounded by a mountain of clothes, busy packing for her weeklong trip to Ronnie’s family’s cabin. It was getting late, even more so considering she had to be up early in the morning due to the long drive, so it was just her luck when the phone unexpectedly rang as she was searching through a basket of clean underthings for her missing favorite pair of socks. A t-shirt bra still in hand, she leaned over her bed to grab at the nearby rotary phone and lifted the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”

“Maxine,” it was Dustin, and she instantly rolled her eyes at his abrupt use of her full name. He knew just how much she hated it, so it’d better be something good. “Have you talked to Steve recently?”

“Not since last week.” Flopping next to the open suitcase on her bed, she tossed the bra sideways onto an undignified pile of unfolded tank tops. “Why?” She asked cautiously, taking care to sound as neutral as possible. Billy always said that he could tell when she was lying, but she just chalked that up to him being a tack-sharp cop rather than her having _that_ bad of a poker face; regardless, Dustin already sounded too agitated to catch any of her quote-unquote tells. At least, that’s what she hoped.

“Well, I just finished talking to him about a recent development of something important, and let’s just say he gave me the impression that _you_ know more than you’ve let on.”

She hummed, hopefully annoyingly. “Like what?”

“Max,” he groaned in frustration. “Cut the shit. I know Steve told you that he’s trying to have a baby.”

Actually, he hadn’t, but Billy had, so she conceded the point. “I might’ve heard about that through the grapevine,” she agreed, unwilling to disclose Billy’s secret but also not wanting to outright lie to Dustin, either. Thinking it over, she realized that she could avoid doing both if she navigated his questions with enough half-truths, thus being able to say she _technically_ hadn’t shared the secret _or_ lied. Either way, this ought to be an interesting conversation for them both.

“Who else knows?” He asked suspiciously, but he made an irritating sound that luckily saved her from having to name names—thankfully, because there were exceedingly few ways to spin that into a non-answer. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. When did you find out?”

“Last month.” That was accurate; she just didn’t specify that it’d been last Saturday and not at the same time that he’d personally found out, as he undoubtedly assumed. Pressing the receiver between her ear and the crook of her shoulder so she could go hands-free, she shifted some wadded-up tank tops around the inside of the suitcase and, admitting defeat, took them out one-by-one to fold and place in a stack in her lap.

“Me too,” Dustin said, sounding relieved now. The irony of the situation was not lost on Max: Dustin was acting as if this was _his_ big secret to tell, as if he was glad for someone else to finally help carry the weight of it. If Steve ever found out about it, she didn’t think he would be that mad, because he’d always been absurdly lenient with Dustin’s antics—he was so obviously Steve’s favorite, always had been and probably always would be. “Well, thank god. I need someone else to talk to about this other than Suzie-Poo. Robin must be busy or something, because she never picks up when I call.”

Max snorted, setting the newly folded pile of clothes back into the suitcase and feeling a considerable amount of satisfaction at how little space they now took up. She reached over to grab the laundry basket so she could resume her search of the missing sock. “Or,” she supplied, throwing a hand towel out of the way and a pillowcase onto said pillow, “she’s screening your calls and purposefully avoiding you. You do tend to talk people’s ears off.”

He scoffed, but it was only quasi-affronted. “I’m a teaching assistant, what can I say? Talking is literally part of my job description.”

“All I’m saying is, hey, _real_ lucky undergrads.” Then Max used one hand to pull the phone away, because she’d finally found the other fuzzy pink sock patterned with little flying dachshunds clad in hot dog buns, and she just couldn’t contain her enthusiasm. “Fuck _yeah_!” She whispered, triumphantly raising it to the ceiling like Rafiki holding up Simba.

Dustin’s tinny, annoyed voice sounded distant now that it wasn’t next to her ear. “Do you want to know what Steve told me or not?”

Fumbling, she dropped the sock next to its other pair and replaced the phone. “Yes, please,” she said hurriedly. If she sounded too eager, Billy was to blame—they’d met on Thursday night for their rescheduled dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, and, when she’d tried to draw any new information out of him, all he’d given her was a look that would’ve wilted flowers.

Dustin sighed dramatically and, just because he could, spoke in a stage whisper. “ _Someone_ ,” he stressed, “donated _you-know-what_ to him a week ago.” He briefly paused, seemingly waiting for Max’s gasp of outrage that never came, before continuing. “He’s waiting to find out if _it_ worked.”

She hadn’t made a noise, but her blood had suddenly gone cold. If Dustin knew the donor in question was Billy, he would’ve led with that, right? “Someone? You know who?”

It was critical now that he told her every last detail, because, if he _did_ know, she at least wanted to give Dustin a head’s up, no, _a head start_ before Billy himself found out and drove to Chicago just to strangle him with his bare hands. She wouldn’t put it past him—he _really_ did not like Dustin.

“Not a clue,” he admitted, and she breathed out in silent relief. Good, she didn’t feel like testifying as a witness in her brother’s murder trial anyways. “You?”

“ _Mm._ ” She couldn’t think of a way to broach that topic without Billy coming after her instead; fortunately, Dustin seemed to interpret her thinly veiled confession as anything but. “Well,” she continued, covering her tracks before he realized that she hadn’t exactly said no. “Good for him.”

Dustin was incredulous. “You really think it’s a good idea?”

Max kicked the now-empty laundry basket to the side of her bed. “Regardless of what I think, it already sounds like it’s a done deal.” She hoped it was, at least for Steve’s sake. Billy would be another story entirely. “But, yeah, I think it’s sweet. Out there, sure, but sweet.”

“ _Sweet?_ ” He practically screeched. “I know it’s his choice or whatever, blah-blah-blah, but Steve deciding to become a single parent and accepting that he’s going to die alone is _sweet_ to you?”

“Steve’s a good person,” she clarified, crossing her legs and tapping her bare foot against the carpet as she threw more clothes together. “And he was a great de facto babysitter. Whatever happens, that kid’s gonna grow up loved, something that isn’t always guaranteed even with two parents. We should know better than anybody—both of us only had our moms for a long time, and we turned out fine.”

For the first time in all the years that she’d known him, Dustin was utterly speechless. It was such a momentous occasion that, like a total eclipse or a once-in-a-lifetime comet, Max almost felt the need to write the date and time down for future generations to study.

“…Ah, yeah,” he said sheepishly, making her grin at his sudden humbleness. God love Dustin, but he tended to overreact to nearly everything; even the briefest moments of self-reflection were always sorely welcome. “You’re not wrong. Wow, I sound like such an asshole.”

She understood why Dustin worried the way he did about Steve, and she didn’t want him to get the impression that he needed to stop caring completely, just that he should take a few steps back and learn to not freak out as much over things out of his control. “Hey, it’s normal to be worried for your friends. I get it. I know your concern’s coming from a good place.”

“I just don’t know why now, out of everything,” he murmured. “Steve’s still young, he could find his own Suzie out there.”

 _Aw_ , she thought, making a temporarily obnoxious kissy face at the receiver. _Marital bliss._

“He still could.” She got up to collect the remaining clothes off her bed and to pull the suitcase to the floor, now more than ready to call it a night. Some more things needed folded, but, other than picking out a few pairs of shoes and loading her toiletries after her shower in the morning, she was pretty much ready to go. As she tidied up, she quirked an all-knowing smile that he couldn’t see or hear. “Who knows, maybe he did?”

Max knew she was bordering on dangerous territory, but what was the point of knowing something that Dustin didn’t if she couldn’t subtly taunt him with it? He would find out the whole truth sooner or later, then would loudly confront her about it, but the long con was just too much fun.

As predicted, he merely snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“If there’s hope for you, Dustin,” she bit back a chortle that he didn’t know was at his expense, and that made her want to poke fun at him even more. “There’s hope for anyone, including Steve. Hell, even with a baby, he might have a better chance than you ever did. You’re lucky Suzie likes you.”

“Y’know, I’m just going to go ahead and take that as a compliment.”

Max just laughed and laughed.


	6. Chapter 6

_July 4, 1995_

As it turned out, Hopper had always planned to give Billy the Fourth off. “I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again—you’ve been working too hard, kid,” he’d insisted during their water cooler talk about the upcoming holiday. “You deserve a real break, not just one measly extra day here and there. Hell, take a whole week or two, that is, on the sole condition that you come watch the fireworks with me and Joyce. Jane’s got some sparklers that she’s keen to share, so start practicing your waving arm now, hint, hint.”

Billy, also not for the first time, had firmly declined his generous offer. Without work, he’d only have a CRT television, a couple of dog-eared paperbacks, and a more or less depleted stash of weed, liquor, and rationed cigarettes to fill his days with; so, apart from going for a very, _very_ long daily jog, that would mean mostly sitting around in that house of ghosts with fuck all to do, and he couldn’t think of anything worse. But Hopper’s doggedness knew no bounds, and, after going back and forth for a comical amount of time, they’d eventually reached a compromise: Billy would also take off that Monday before the Fourth—which, factoring in the weekend, totaled to a four-day break—and had to promise to be at the park by dusk, no exceptions. Any other time, he would’ve dug his heels in more, because he really wasn’t looking forward to the traffic, crowds, and loud noises, but, who was he kidding, it’d been a done deal ever since Steve had mentioned going after their grown-up playdate. With that in mind, Billy had begrudgingly given in to his demands.

As for Hopper’s part of the bargain, he’d agreed to stop bugging him as much about slowing down or taking any more time off, and that’d led to Billy immediately snagging a multitude of irregular shifts before and after his break—namely, ones that his vacation-bound coworkers wouldn’t willingly touch, even on a good day. Hopper had pursed his lips at him, making the same face that he made whenever Billy handed in his hours, but he’d ignored it. Deep down, he recognized that Hopper’s concern came from a good place, and it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know why Billy had been more insistent than ever on filling his time with this temporary job; to be fair, it wasn’t like he made a point of talking about his personal troubles to begin with.

Months ago, work had given him something worthwhile to do after the initial fallout of his dad’s irrevocable brain damage, but, now, it’d pivoted into forcibly keeping himself busy to stop thinking about the ongoing situation with Steve. Insidious little questions with no good answers—ranging from what Steve was doing at this very moment to wondering if _it_ had worked—plagued his every waking hour, specifically when he didn’t have any mind-numbing, time-filling paperwork to drudge over. It was funny: he’d always hated doing such tedious aspects of the job back at the precinct in Los Angeles, but, here, it’d become his lifeline, the sole aspect of his monotonous existence keeping him remotely sane.

And late in the afternoon on Independence Day, he felt less grounded than ever as he waited just outside Steve’s door— _again._ Recently, he’d done everything in his power to repress the recurrent déjà-vu, but memories of his last visit here kept popping up at the most inopportune times: last Monday, Billy had taken a stack of reports out of a color-coded filing cabinet and had finally been struck by the sudden profound realization that, after he’d left, Steve had taken a sample of Billy’s own _semen_ and had _inserted_ it into _himself_. He’d played off his very abrupt, very violent jolt as a symptom of the overzealous air conditioning, but it was for an entirely different reason that nothing, not the sun or a scalding hot shower, had been able to warm him up for the rest of the day.

He knocked again, loudly, wanting to yell to get Steve’s attention but biting his tongue at the impulse; the last time that he’d done that, he’d gotten a tired, irritated Steve shushing him, not to mention a hearty smack in the face from those uninhibited pheromones. Steve’s heat was over by now, but Billy could do without a repeat experience of a grown man acting like an uptight librarian. So, he just kept his mouth shut and waited with as much patience as he could muster.

The door opened a few seconds later, just in the nick of time, because Billy was mulling over the option of peeking into a nearby window like a creep. But then there was Steve, looking considerably more put together than before—showered, shaved, dressed in actual clothing like a three-quarter-length Henley and jeans—and he looked Billy up and down with very little tact. As Billy had predicted, he had no discernible smell radiating off him in droves, and his own relief was palpable. “Hey, thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for assuming I have no life,” Billy uttered, stone-faced, and then he raised and dropped his eyebrows as a sign of facetiousness.

Steve, on cue, flicked his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation, which was apparently his signature move when Billy was involved. “Just get in here.”

Stepping past him and into the entranceway, his initial intake of breath was clean and cool from the cranked central air; he peered at the furniture and possessions as he moved further into the apartment, but nothing of note had changed since his last visit a little over a week ago. Idly, he expected to hear the slaps of footsteps follow behind him, but Steve’s sock-covered feet made no noise: like a ghost, he just came up to Billy’s side, stopped, and also looked over the room.

Billy didn’t know what to say, so he used to opportunity to drop his eyes to his own feet. “You want my shoes off?”

Steve just waved a hand. “Nah. Doesn’t matter out here. I’m only a stickler about the carpet in my bedroom.”

“I’ll remember that for future reference,” Billy replied, fixing him with a quirked eyebrow, and the underlying suggestiveness made Steve flush slightly. Now secretly amused, Billy turned his head to glance around the room. “What’s first on the docket?”

“I really don’t care,” Steve coughed, folding his arms and, strangely, inching away towards the main hallway with every passing word. “I’ve got a VHS collection laid out on the coffee table, so you can go pick something out. I’m pretty sure you’d scoff at what I’d choose.” He stopped in place for a mere second, twisting his hands up in a small concession. “On second thought, I guess it doesn’t really matter who picks what. We’ve got plenty of time to kill.”

“Where you going?” Billy asked, eyes squinting as Steve darted closer and closer to the hallway.

Caught, he raised his hands in mock surrender. “What, did you think I was going to invite you over and not provide food?”

“Define ‘food’.”

Ignoring that, Steve continued, albeit a little snarkily, “I made late lunch or early dinner, depending on whenever we get around to it.”

Billy’s eyes lit up at the numerous possibilities of what Steve had cooked, because he knew that, whatever it was, it’d undoubtedly border on pretentious and humorous. “God, let me guess,” he racked his brain trying to think of the worst meal he could envision; there were several good guesses, but it took approximately two-and-a-half seconds for one dish in particular to come to mind. “Slabs of soggy tofu on fine china.”

Michael, for all his skills as a restaurateur, had tortured him with the white crap plenty of times, and not once had it ever been a good meal—nor, in retrospect, a particularly good memory. But Steve’s scathing glare hadn’t changed since high school, and Billy suddenly found himself too busy trying not to laugh than to keep bitterly reminiscing over his ex-boyfriend’s dishes.

“What the—do I look _that_ uptight?” Steve scoffed, and when he saw Billy’s mouth pop open, he held up a pointed finger in his direction. “No, no, don’t answer that. It’s lasagna, you dick, and we’re using Chinet, so _ha_.”

Billy did laugh now. “I stand corrected. One point for Harrington.” Still smiling, he rested both hands on his hips, adding, “Well, let’s just wait and see. It might not have tofu, but knowing you, there still isn’t any meat in it, either.”

Mentally, he gave a point to himself with regards to Steve’s conspicuous lack of rebuttal, but he didn’t bother gloating. Nobody had ever made him lasagna before, and—meat or no meat—it couldn’t be _that_ bad. And if it were, well, it was the thought that counted, and pretending for politeness’ sake would be a valuable exercise in humility.

Steve rolled his eyes before disappearing completely into the kitchen. “Just go pick a movie. I’ll be right out.”

Billy, still staring at the spot that Steve had just been, took it upon himself to shake his head at their lamentable exchange; he then made his way over to the living room, perched himself on the armrest of the white couch, and looked over the display of VHS tapes arranged like stonework masonry on the glossy mahogany coffee table. There was everything from eighties action films to seventies melodramas to a handful of blank black tapes that, upon viewing, made Billy suddenly pray with all his might that they were home films, namely ones that Steve wouldn’t want him to see. He fingered at one closest to him, hoping its penciled caption boasted something like ‘Steve’s thirteenth birthday’ or ‘Steve’s seventh grade school play’ or anything equally embarrassing and delightful. Ultimately, he was left disappointed, for that specific tape merely read ‘ _Cape Fear_ , ’62, edited for television’ in scribbled, feminine handwriting, and he set it back into its puzzle-like slot with distaste.

Steve appeared out of the kitchen not too long after, catching Billy scanning the back sleeve of _Gorillas in the Mist_. As he came up to the couch, he was holding a white mug in one hand and an ice-cold Stella Artois in the other; he used the side of his mug to displace a copy of _Rain Man_ and, in the free space, set the beer in front of Billy with a satisfying _clink_. “Here.”

“You brought me a beer?” Billy raised a thick eyebrow at him, bending down to take it in his hand. It was already uncapped, too. “Wow, I’m touched.”

Steve rolled his eyes again at his playfully sarcastic tone, sitting on the other end of the couch and now holding his own mug by the rim; for some absurd reason, he was pointedly avoiding using the handle. “They’ve been in the back of my fridge for god knows how long,” he said around a drink of his own indiscernible liquid. “I’m trying to get rid of them, ’cause otherwise, they’re just getting poured down the drain and recycled.”

“Speaking of recycled,” Billy leaned over the table to point specifically at two movies lying side-by-side. “Why the hell do you have shit like _Steel Magnolias_? Or _Can’t Buy Me Love_?”

“They’re my mom’s copies,” Steve explained, his tone more than a little defensive. “Ninety-nine percent of these are my parents’ that they’ve foisted off on me whenever they buy new ones. But I’m not gonna lie, those are good movies, because I otherwise wouldn’t have kept them.”

“Suuure they are,” Billy drew out, taking a short swig of his Stella. As more of a hard spirits man, he didn’t drink beer very often, but he didn’t mind it in moderation. Setting the glass bottle back down, he scanned over the blank tapes again for anything he might’ve missed, and, as luck would have it, a nondescript label to his immediate left caught his attention. Instantly, his eyes almost bugged out of his head. “Oh my fucking god—you have _Columbo_?”

Steve smiled without teeth at Billy’s obvious shock. “Blame my dad.”

“ _Thank_ your dad, more like,” he corrected, now grinning. It wasn’t often that he got this properly excited, but then again, it wasn’t every day that he found not one, not two, but _three_ VHS tapes boasting an entire televised marathon of a show that he hadn’t seen since the seventies. “God, I used to watch it all the time as a kid! Definitely one of the reasons that led me to becoming a cop. Well then,” he lifted the first tape in the air, clearly the victor, as he moved towards the television set. “Happy Fourth. Here’s all we’re watching for the next few hours.”

“Seriously?” Steve gave a little scoff, but it was good-natured. “Alright, whatever.” Then, after a moment of thought, “You want to eat in an hour or wait before we go?”

Focusing on switching the screen on and sliding the tape into the player, he answered, “Later. Just had lunch before I got here.”

“Yeah, me too. Okay,” Steve got up from the couch and set his mug in the free space next to Billy’s beer. “I’ll go stick the pan in the fridge until then. In the meantime, you, uh, know how to use a VHS player?”

Billy turned his eyes from the television screen, waiting there just in case he needed to press the button on the player to rewind the tape, and frowned up at him. “What, do I have ‘stupid’ written across my forehead or something?”

“No, no,” Steve said a little too smoothly, the corners of his mouth upturned. “But last week’s incident with the coffee maker says otherwise.”

In dramatic fashion, he disappeared before Billy could think of a retort or, at least, something biting to quip back; although, once he was sure that Steve was out of earshot, he huffed out a laugh. The tape didn’t need rewound, but there were some commercials at the start, and he forwarded it until Peter Falk’s grizzled face appeared on the screen. Then he paused it, resettled himself on the couch cushions, and waited there with the remote in hand and a finger hovering over the play button until Steve’s momentary return.

And that was the extent of how they spent the remaining diurnal hours of their combined Fourth of July: sitting on other ends of Steve’s couch, watching taped episodes of an old show about a LAPD homicide detective, and nursing their respective drinks of beer and lemonade. Speaking of which, Billy had only figured out that little mystery when Steve had gone to the bathroom about an hour into the marathon, and curiosity had dictated him to take a sip to see if it’d been doctored in any way; it hadn’t, but it _was_ acidic to the point of burning, and the whole affair left Billy slightly more concerned for Steve’s stomach lining and overall sanity than he’d been before.

About an hour and a half before they were supposed to be at the park, Steve threw the lasagna into the oven, which slowly but surely turned the apartment into some kind of a glorified Italian restaurant. Not that they took much notice, for they were so enraptured in an episode guest starring Leslie Nielsen that the timer going off in the kitchen made them both jump.

“That’d be the ‘soggy tofu’,” Steve gave Billy a quick yet long-suffering look; he hadn’t gotten over the earlier slight, apparently. Dashing to turn off the incessant timer, he called from the other room, “You want to eat out there or in here?”

“Is that even a question?” He yelled back, getting up from the couch and moving towards Steve’s direction to fix his own plate. Once in the kitchen where the alluring aroma was even stronger, he stood by and watched Steve open a fresh pack of disposable plates, recyclability be damned. “It’s a show about a kick-ass cop in California. Of course we’re gonna keep watching.”

Throwing him a napkin, Steve pulled out two forks, a butter knife, and a spatula out from a drawer. “Sounds familiar,” he said wryly. “Remind you of home or something?”

“Yeah, in a cheesy seventies way.” But he couldn’t help but sound wistful as he ruminated on that thought. “Hard not to miss it.”

Steve was busy cutting the lasagna into grids, but he seemed to recognize Billy’s quiet homesickness and kept the conversation light because of it. “LA is certainly…unlike other cities I’ve been to, and that’s both a compliment and a complaint. But the weather was always the best part, especially coming from whenever it’s shitty here. Which, granted, is most of the time except for right now.”

“ _Mm_ , coming here in the middle of winter fucking sucked,” Billy grumbled. A sinful part of him still felt miffed that Neil had nearly killed himself in the middle of the coldest, most unforgiving time of the year, but there was no use bellyaching over it now. What was past was past, his father would most likely never recover, and he’d successfully endured the full brunt of a Midwestern winter for the first time in almost a decade. “But it’s easier being here in the summer. It might even be nicer, ’cause this time of year is stupidly hot and dry back home.”

Steve set two healthy-sized portions onto two respective plates. “Good thing that’s not a problem here.”

“God,” Billy said suddenly, scrubbing a hand over his face and tipping his head to the side. “Do we really have nothing else to discuss other than the damn weather?”

“Well, we’re boring adults,” Steve said dryly, placing a fork onto one of the plates and stepping over to Billy so he could shove it into his hands. “And that’s what boring adults are supposed to do, right?”

Billy set everything onto the island countertop and, when Steve turned around to wash his hands, stared bullets into the back of his head. For some reason, those words had actually rankled him; he resented being lumped into that category, because nothing in his life had ever been, or ever would be, boring—Steve’s own big request had only served to prove that point. “So,” Billy cleared his throat. _Do boring adults talk about artificial inseminations? Didn’t think so._ “Last week.”

Steve dropped the soap dispenser into the sink with a loud clang. “Uh…yeah?”

“It went well?” Billy kept his voice tight and trained, unabashedly resorting to using the very same cop voice on Steve that he did during routine checks or dealing with extra belligerent citizens. Or on Max, chiefly whenever she decided to ruffle his feathers.

The faucet shut off, and Steve turned around to face him, a torn paper towel in his grip and as coiled as a spring. “Well, it _went_ ,” he managed. He was working his hands together, but it was more out of absentmindedness than it was to actually dry them off. “But I don’t know if it worked just yet.”

“How long until you know?”

Steve shrugged, shooting the damp paper towel at the trashcan and missing his shot by an inch or so. It landed in a heap at the base of the silver container, but he didn’t move to pick it up. “A few more weeks at least. Probably the earliest being the end of this month, like, if I get my heat again.”

Billy shifted on his heels; he hadn’t considered that possibility, not even for a second. Already, he’d started to think of it as a done deal, something set completely in stone, and the only thing left was to wait for the inevitable confirmation. It was strange to renege on that thought now, especially since he’d started working on getting used to it. “You think that’ll happen?”

“I don’t know,” Steve all but whispered. “I hope not. But I just don’t know.”

Billy nodded tersely. “If that happens, just to get this out of the way, you have my number.” And when Steve looked unsure, he used his other cop voice—the one that bordered on menacing but definitely brooked no arguments—to stress, “Use it.”

Steve nodded back, and he could see his throat bobbing from here. “Thanks, Billy,” he said quietly, sincerely. He picked up his own plate and then, visibly struck by a thought, set it back down. “Hey, uh, you haven’t told anyone else about this, right?”

“ _Harrington._ ” Even to his own ears, it was excessively stern.

“Okay, okay, don’t give me that look. I know it’s a dumb question, but Dustin’s been acting weirder than usual lately.” He then started to explain exactly who Dustin was, incorrectly assuming that Billy didn’t remember him, but then he made a noise and decided to press on. “Either I’m paranoid or…it’s not that big of a deal, but I’d just prefer to keep all of _this_ ,” he gestured in both of their directions, “under wraps until it’s real, and then, after that, when it’s a little more set in stone, you know what I mean?”

Billy breathed in and out, suddenly not feeling very hungry despite the lasagna looking fantastic. “…Max knows,” he admitted, after he’d had a minute to choose his words carefully. “About my…part in this. But I personally swore her to secrecy, so she better not have told him anything. I’ll deal with her if she did.”

There was a look of alarmed surprise on Steve’s face for a second, but he quickly transfixed it into something artificially casual. “O-oh, yeah, okay. That’s fine. It’s not like I’m asking you to keep secrets from your stepsister.”

“Sister,” Billy corrected without thinking.

That surprised look returned, even stuck around this time, and Billy didn’t blame him. He knew just how much that one word conveyed, how much of a complete one-eighty it was in comparison to how poorly he’d treated Max when he was a fucking asshole teenager; Steve would recognize the contrast better than most. “From your sister,” he amended quickly, blinking like a hummingbird’s wings. “It’s not—some of them know I’m trying, at least, but I just don’t want absolutely _all_ my friends and family to jump down my throat before anything’s really happened.”

“Funny way of handling it.” Matter of fact, the whole situation was, but he didn’t really need to express that; they both had a pretty good idea.

“What can I say,” Steve gave a jerky, awkward shrug. “I’m funny like that.”

Billy took his plate back off the counter and pushed the fork in more to prevent its fall in transit. “Hey, the first step is recognizing you have a problem,” he retorted, turning on his heel and hightailing it to the living room. By the time that Steve joined him, he was already a third of the way done with his serving.

“How is it?” Steve asked wearily, setting his own plate and silverware atop the VHS-laden coffee table so he could pick up his mug to first take a drink. “As bad as you thought it’d be?”

Billy pointed with his fork, a hunk of reddish noodle on the tines and a string of melted cheese pulling from the rest. “Gotta say, Harrington, I’m literally eating my words here. Who know you were actually good at cooking?”

Steve didn’t hide his triumphant smirk as he leaned back into the cushions and hovered his mug by his lips. “It’s my nonna’s recipe,” he explained, watching Billy eat with gusto. “Made stuff with her all the time as a kid. Hers is probably better ’cause she adds meat, but I always hated having to take sausage out of the casing. So gross.”

“Still damn good.”

“I’ll be sure to pass the compliment along,” he raised his cup in cheers. “But I’ll omit the recipe change part. Pretty sure that’s some kinda Italian cardinal sin.”

Billy flicked his eyes sideways, swallowing. “You Italian or somethin’?”

“Or something,” Steve confirmed, eyes creased in humor. “One-fourth, on my mom’s side. My nonna’s originally from Terni.”

“And mine’s from New Jersey,” he countered with a snort. Out of the corner of his eye, Billy could see Steve itching to ask more about the mystery of his maternal family, but he didn’t want to touch that subject with a ten-foot pole—not here, not now, not ever. So, he changed the subject. “We’re supposed to be there at what, eight?”

Steve set his drink down and picked up his own plate. “Seven-thirty.” He shuffled a soggy noodle around and cut it in half with the side of his fork. “But whenever we get there is when it’s gonna be.”

“We taking my truck?”

Steve looked at him, unnecessarily apprehensive. “I—sure. If that’s okay.”

Billy snorted again. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to. Besides, it’s not even mine in the first place.”

“Does that mean you still have that Camaro?” Steve asked around a bite of lasagna, curiously raising his eyebrows.

“Sure do. Back home.” He’d stowed it in an old friend’s sprawling backyard; it was safely outside the city limits, and he’d covered it with a tarp to lessen the absurd amount of sun, but he still worried about it every day. “And you still have the Beemer.”

Steve huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, I do. I’ve had several opportunities to get a newer, flashier company car, but I didn’t see the point. Ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” He smiled, presumably at some long-past memory. “Some things never change, huh?”

“No,” Billy agreed, voice somber rather than nostalgic like Steve’s. “But enough else has.”

“True.”

They finished their dinner alongside the taped episode’s remaining runtime. With a good show and good food, it was a casual but enjoyable meal, and things only got better towards the end—earlier, Billy had guessed the killer about ten minutes in, and he couldn’t help but gloat when the reveal proved him correct. “And you questioned my credentials.”

“Lucky break,” Steve grumbled. He hadn’t even come close to hedging a guess.

The tape ended once that episode was over, leaving nothing on the television other than fuzzy monotone static; Billy figured that was as good a time as any to head to the kitchen to dispose of his trash, so he folded his napkin and paper plate in half and stood up. Instinctively checking the face of his watch, he emitted a disgruntled sound that made Steve look up from his own plate, which was somehow still a bite or two from being complete. Evidently, he was an absurdly slow eater when given the chance.

“Leave that stuff,” Steve directed him, peering out of the windows at the distantly approaching dusk and subsequently hurrying up because of it. “I’ll get it. All I gotta do is put the leftovers away and put the forks in the dishwasher, and I’ll meet you out there.”

Billy looked between him and the plate in his hand, not sure if it would be ruder to leave his trash as directed or to disobey; but he didn’t have a chance to ponder his options, what with Steve just staring up at him until he forcibly complied. “…’Kay.”

So, he set everything next to his empty beer bottle on the coffee table, turned on his heel, walked back through the front hallway, and exited Steve’s comfortable apartment. Coming from the cranked central air that he’d been subjected to over the last few hours, the manageably humid, balmy early evening breeze felt phenomenally good on his chilled, goosefleshed skin, its comfortable warmth like a thick blanket. Between that and the distant fragrance of trimmed grass and sunbaked pavement, he’d never felt so back in his element in all the months that he’d been here, even if there was a conspicuous absence of palm trees and looming clouds of pollution embittering the air quality. He came up to the Chevy and couldn’t help but note—like always—just how fortunate it was that the Hawkins Police Department had enough vehicles that he could borrow this one indefinitely, because his initial plan to repair and then use Neil’s totaled truck had fallen to the wayside; more specifically, when he’d found out that, even _with_ insurance, it would cost more to fix than it would to scrap and buy a newer used one.

Still reminiscing, he opened the driver’s seat door and leaned in to both ignite the engine and turn on the air conditioning, but he didn’t sit in it—it was sweltering in there (even for his taste) and much, much nicer outside, and he wanted to savor as much sunshine as he could until Steve came out. At one point in his life, he would’ve filled the void with a steady stream of cigarettes, but he was too content with leaning against the door with crossed arms and tilting his closed eyes up at the sky than to bother digging out the emergency pack that he always kept in his glove compartment.

He stayed that way until Steve made his reappearance, and the handful of minutes was just enough time for the air conditioning to turn the interior from an oven to a quasi-refrigerator. Billy heard him before he saw him, and he cracked an eye and shielded his face against the light so he could watch Steve lock the front door and head down the stairs; shortly thereafter, he approached with his hands casually in the pockets of his jeans and a pair of scuffed Converse slip-ons on his feet, not looking almost thirty or remotely parental leaning in the slightest. Billy didn’t say anything, just got in the now-cool truck, and Steve did the same.

The drive to the hill overlooking the Hawkins Centennial Park wasn’t far, which made the lingering awkwardness easy enough to stomach. To avoid lapsing into a heavy silence, they discussed the most benign subjects that they feasibly had in common—their jobs, Max, sports, news, anything other than the elephant in the room—until Billy pulled into a luckily open parking spot that wasn’t a far walk from the top of the hill. Although the fireworks wouldn’t start until nine-thirty, there was already a packed crowd and a queue of cars filtering in more and more with every second. As they both got out of the truck, Billy looked out over the multitude of small groups littering the entire hill, and it inwardly concerned him that it was going to be impossible to find the others. Fortunately, Steve was there to automatically make his way up a beaten path with brazen confidence, and Billy just followed behind, glad at least one of them had done this little tradition before. From there, they eventually stumbled upon Jim Hopper and Joyce Byers, sitting under the shade of a small tree, in a little circle of lawn chairs around a spread-out blanket and a blue cooler.

“Boys,” Hopper greeted from a short distance, a Corona in hand and seemingly unperturbed at seeing them show up together. It couldn’t have come as a complete shock—sometime last month, he’d offhandedly mentioned that Steve had approached him to reconnect, and that’d resulted in Hopper’s vast approval. But, then again, Billy hadn’t said anything else about it when they’d talked at work last week, and he certainly hadn’t mentioned bringing Steve tonight as his plus one. Regardless, Hopper was astute at connecting the dots of little details like that, so perhaps it was merely one of his logical deductions. “Happy Fourth! Thanks for coming.”

There were two more empty chairs, and Billy took the one next to Hopper as Steve took the one next to Joyce. As for the pink quilted blanket that was on the ground, it was rumpled in spots, as if someone had been sitting on it; Billy deduced that Jane and her boyfriend were somewhere around here, even though they were currently nowhere to be seen. Now settled in his seat, he nodded in the others’ directions, offering a restrained yet polite smile, and let Steve be the one to start off the conversation. “Hi, Hop, Joyce. Everything good with you two?”

Ten years on, Hopper had more wrinkles on his face than he’d had a decade ago, as well as more white in his hair and beard than not; however, in comparison, Joyce somehow hadn’t really changed. Sure, there were new crow’s feet around her perpetually worried brown eyes and some deeper smile lines framing her mouth, but she otherwise looked as ageless as ever. Her hair was the same shade of dark brown with bangs cut into it, but, compared to how she usually wore it down, she had the rest pulled off her neck with a claw clip.

“Great,” she smiled warmly at Steve, reaching over to pat the top of his hand. Both of her sons were all grown up, but once a mother, always a mother. “Glad you two could make it.” Pulling back, she now turned her doe eyes in Billy’s direction. “You coming over this weekend, Billy?”

Legs spread open in his chair and arms folded over his chest, he tipped his head back to look up at the sun-dimming sky. “Putting me on the spot, Joyce,” he hummed, clicking his tongue. “Sure, why not. Not like I’ve got much else goin’ on.”

“Look at that,” Hopper snorted, smacking a hand onto Billy’s right shoulder and knowing better than to keep it there for anything more than a few seconds. “We finally wore you down. Again. And it wasn’t even me this time.”

Steve, visibly lost, looked between all three of them. “What’s this weekend?”

“Mexican Train,” Joyce explained. “We do it practically every Sunday after dinner, which is when Jane and Mike come over. Billy, too, when we can snare him.”

“It gets competitive,” Hopper interjected. And, with a wink, he added in mock seriousness, “Don’t know if you could handle it.”

Joyce made an exasperated face at Hopper, shaking her head a little. “He’s kidding, of course. You’re more than welcome to join us, Steve. You know you’re always invited, right?”

Even in the shade and the increasingly lowering light, Billy didn’t miss how clearly that touched him; namely, from his excessive blinking to his throat was doing that bobbing thing again, all in the name of barely concealed emotion.

“Thanks, Joyce,” Steve murmured, giving her a grateful smile. “I would, really, but I’m going to have to take a rain check. I’ve got to go to Chicago this Thursday until next Monday. But I appreciate it.”

“That many people buyin’ paintings? Talk about lucrative.” Hopper’s eyebrows lifted and fell in disbelief. “I swear, you’re more in Fort Wayne than you are here. Maybe it’s time to look into moving a little closer.”

Steve shifted in his chair and brought up one of his long legs to set it across his thigh. The motion exposed his ankles, revealing a strip of pale pink juxtaposed against blue denim and off-white canvas. “You’re not wrong,” he shrugged. “Eh, I don’t know…I don’t mind the drive, and I had enough of the big city life after Indianapolis.” At that, a look of sudden realization appeared on Steve’s open face, struck by something Billy didn’t quite understand. “Speaking of which, how’re things with Jonathan and Nancy?”

Hopper and Joyce very obviously exchanged a telling look.

Steve kept his elbows on the armrests but lifted his hands in a placating gesture. “I know,” he reassured. “Nancy told me at Dustin’s wedding.” And then, more softly, “She asked me to be the godfather. How’s she doing?”

Billy had been lazily watching the scene out of the corner of his eye, but this sudden exchange made him full-on jolt and snap his attention directly onto Steve’s face. With jumbled thoughts and theories already filtering into his head at the speed of light, he hung onto every incoming word as raptly as a shark that’d just smelled a drop of blood.

Conversely, all at once, Joyce’s tense shoulders visibly eased. “Oh, honey,” she gushed, shifting in her seat to set her hand back onto Steve’s, letting it comfortingly linger there this time. “That’s wonderful. She’s due in November and doing just great.” She looked back at Hopper for confirmation of something, and he gave her a tiny nod before she continued. “And you didn’t hear it from me, but they just found out it’s a girl.”

Steve’s mouth popped open into a perfect tiny circle, yet there was some unidentifiable emotion flickering behind those impossibly big eyes. “Wow,” he croaked. Enraptured, Billy filed that and every other minute detail away to pore over later. “That’s great, god, now I feel bad that I haven’t talked to her in a few weeks. We’re all just so busy these days.”

Joyce nodded emphatically. “It was so much easier when you were all kids.”

Hopper waved an airy hand, luckily not the one holding his beer. “Eh, at least everyone’s still relatively nearby. In two months, we’ll all be together for Labor Day, and, before you know it, it’ll be Thanksgiving.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, both him and Joyce now nodding in unison. “Looking forward to it.”

And, like clockwork, Hopper turned his attention to the chair on his left. “I know we sound like broken records,” he began, at least attempting to sound apologetic. “But how about it? Can we count on you too, Billy?”

Billy, still transfixed on the little aspects of Steve’s odd behavior—his fidgeting, tapping feet and how he was picking absentmindedly at the skin around his nails—hadn’t really heard Hopper’s question, but he did notice everyone’s sudden attention on him. “Huh?”

Smirking as he took a sip, Hopper clarified, “Annual Labor Day party at our place. I think I mentioned it at work before.”

“Oh.” He glanced at the grass beneath his feet, kicking at a tuft with the toe of his boot. He knew from experience that it was easier to agree to Hopper and Joyce’s frequent requests, because if he declined too often, even more opportunities would pop up in its place; they were nothing if not persistent, essentially two sides of the same coin, and it was largely why they paired together so well. “I mean, I’m going to be putting the house on the market here in the next few weeks, so as long as I’m free then, yeah, I guess.”

“Any updates on your dad?” Joyce asked, voice tender. She didn’t know the full story of his complicated relationship with his father—not even Hopper did, not entirely—but having been previously married to a man as unforgiving as Neil, she was adept at reading the hollowed look in people’s eyes and not pushing them further than necessary.

Billy simply grunted. “Same old, same old. Clearly, nothing’s gonna change, so it’s time to unload the dead weight. I’ve held out long enough.” He stopped to roll his eyes at the varying degrees of worried looks. “I’m talking about the _house_.”

Well, _mostly_ , but they didn’t need to know that.

Some low thuds of grassy footsteps and the crinkling of plastic made him turn his head to the left, and there was Jane Hopper and that pale-faced, black-haired small fry that she’d been dating since they were teenyboppers—Mick or something. He never bothered to remember, because they’d never really gotten along well with each other; if he had to hazard a guess, it was a fifty-fifty split of them being too fundamentally different and still harboring too much bad blood to ever become chummy. But Jane was enamored with that scrawny nerd, and Billy thought a lot of her, so he made an effort to be at least remotely congenial. Mick, for all his many faults, seemed to have the same mindset: they would do it for Jane’s sake, nothing more.

Twirling a plastic bag in one of her hands, Jane was wearing some navy blue t-shirt dress with embroidered silver stars and a white scrunchie in her brown curls. She came to a stop next to Billy’s chair and laid a light hand onto his shoulder, a mirror of what her father had done earlier.

“Hello, Billy,” she greeted, her enthusiasm infectious. He’d just seen her a little less than a week ago, but she always acted as if it were the first time in months, maybe ever. Reaching over, she tugged on Mick’s striped red-and-white short shirtsleeve and pointed in Steve’s direction. “Hey, look who else is here.”

Mick’s dour face, mostly compromised of his pinched nose and full lips, lit up like the moon. “Hey! Steve!”

Billy looked back at Steve, the newfound belle of the ball. An easygoing smile had replaced whatever weird emotion that he’d been exuding before, but there was something just out of reach behind those brown eyes. “Yo, Jane, Mike, what’s new, guys?”

 _Ah, shit, at least I was close_ , Billy thought with an internal smirk. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. Hell, he felt his brain already suppressing it.

Jane and not Mick, _Mike_ shrugged and smiled back at him. For some reason, even all these years later, Steve Harrington was still like cool-guy catnip to these not-kids. Billy would’ve found it funny if dredging up the past didn’t leave such a bad taste in his mouth.

“Not much, really,” Jane replied, coming up to sit on the blanket in front of them on the ground.

Mike nodded, taking the bag from her and doing the same. Sitting side-by-side with their shoulders pressed together, they looked more like an odd caricature of the American flag than ever. “Yeah, just the usual around here. Boring as ever.”

“Sounds nice,” Steve said, almost jokingly.

“Nah, they’re just being modest,” Hopper cut in, pointing at his daughter with the neck of his beer bottle and receiving a look from her in the process. “Jane just got a letter of recognition from the state.”

“Wow! That’s amazing, congratulations.”

“It’s nothing,” she murmured, but there was a small smile on her face when Mike wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Just doing my job.”

She wasn’t being dismissive of her accomplishments on purpose—the truth was that Jane had a hard time receiving praise and accepting compliments, just two of the many consequences of her rough early life. Immediately after being born, her drug-addicted, mentally ill birth mother had been coerced into giving her away, and, because she had no other relatives to speak of, she’d subsequently danced around various foster homes all over the state for a solid decade. That is, until unwittingly finding herself as one of the charges of a wealthy scientist a little ways outside of Hawkins. Dr. Martin Brenner was a cold man, but he wasn’t cruel like some of her other foster parents had been; oddly enough, despite his lack of affection, he’d steadfastly insisted on being referred to as ‘Papa’, no exceptions. That contradiction quickly became the least of her problems.

From the way that she’d originally explained it to Billy, Dr. Brenner had never touched or hurt her, maybe had even treated her better than the rest of her foster sisters—for some reason, out of all the others, she’d quickly become his favorite. But Billy had read the archived police report himself, and, through it, he’d learned that Brenner’s apparent altruism was a sham: he wasn’t a foster father out of common decency, but instead to ultimately groom her to be part of an illegal alpha female prostitution ring as soon as she hit puberty. Luckily, that’d never panned out—after almost a full year of being under Dr. Brenner’s thumb, an eleven-year-old Jane had ultimately worked up the courage to run away. Somehow, she’d navigated through the massive forests surrounding Hawkins until fatefully stumbling upon an old diner run by a friend of Hopper’s, who’d actually been one of the first responders on the scene. After that, everything about Jane’s life had changed for the better.

Even after Brenner was busy rotting in a federal prison in Terre Haute on a multiple life sentence, it’d taken no small amount of time and therapy before Jane had felt comfortable enough properly assimilating into society. Hopper, her first genuine foster parent, had greatly helped, but that was really where the other kids came into the picture. One fateful November morning, just hours after Will Byers had officially been declared missing, Hopper had been busy at work trying to locate him, and his absence had left her free to sneak out of the cabin to go wandering along the train tracks. She’d walked for ages, not really going anywhere in particular, until she’d reached a junkyard; as fate would have it, she’d stumbled upon a group of truant boys inside an abandoned bus as they were making a harebrained plan to split up and scour the woods for their missing friend.

It’d been just as much of a shock for her to find other kids her own age as it was for them to meet a mute, malnourished girl with awkwardly short curls; still, with her help and relative familiarity of the woods, they’d succeeded in finding a concussed and severely dehydrated Will, unable to move due to a badly broken leg, somewhere off a beaten path not far from where he’d crashed his bike coming home from Mike’s the evening before. She’d been the one to stay with him while the others had gone to get help, and the combined experiences of her own trauma and comforting Will in a crisis made her realize that—above all else—she’d wanted to help kids like herself and him when she was older. Years later, after she’d graduated high school with full honors, she’d decided going to a nearby college to become a social worker was the only logical choice; and it was, because the State of Indiana couldn’t ask for anyone more qualified than Jane.

Billy shook himself from his thoughts, still just as astounded by her miraculous life story as the first time that he’d heard it. In retrospect, he saw a lot of himself in her: their tumultuous upbringings, their devotions to the select people that they cared about, their proneness to quick, frustrated anger—even though, unlike Billy, Jane was typically soft-spoken and nearly always kind to those that deserved it. Despite her being longtime friends with Max, he’d only gotten to know her as well as he did from working with her dad over the last few months; even in that short amount of time, there was enough kinship there that he frequently got the urge to drive down to Terre Haute and handle ‘Papa’ himself.

For now, in the present, he cocked his head in an attempt to decipher the contents of the plastic bag that Mike was now holding. “Whatcha got there?” He asked Jane directly, knowing all-too-well that they were sparklers but still feigning innocence for her sake.

She followed his line of sight and blew out a puff of air in slight annoyance. “It was supposed to be a surprise until later, but _someone_ ,” she glowered at Hopper, resentfully crossing her arms over her knobby knees, “already told you.”

Hopper held a hand over his heart. “Hey, in my defense, you didn’t tell me that I wasn’t supposed to say anything to him.”

“I don’t mind,” Billy chortled. _Leave it to the Chief to fuck up the surprise. Classic._ “Sparklers are great.”

“Did he mention the glow sticks, either?” Mike piped up.

“Actually, he didn’t.”

Jane gave an outraged gasp, and she swiveled her head to the side to give Mike a dirty look. “ _Really?_ ” She complained, snatching the bag from his hands and dumping its contents out on the grass now that that surprise was ruined, too. “Et tu, Brute?”

It humored Billy to no end to see a bashful look appear on Mike’s pale face. “Ah, damn,” he said apologetically, trying to give her a side hug again, but she wasn’t having it. “Sorry, sorry, that one’s on me— _ow_.” She’d lightly pinched at his forearm to make him stop talking.

As punishment, Mike had to pass out the sparklers and various glow stick jewelry to the others, although she helped with giving the leftovers to random passersby. When it was his turn to pick, Billy specifically selected a red bracelet, which, secretly, just so happened to be his favorite color. As he was busy snapping and shaking the liquid to activate it, the local fire department sent off a booming test firework so that everyone up on the hill and around Hawkins would know exactly where to look for the actual display, as well as move in preparation for it if need be. They were in an optimal spot, but Hopper and Billy were facing the opposite direction; so, Hopper slid his chair next to Joyce’s, and, because he didn’t want to be on the far outside of everyone else, Billy repositioned himself between Steve’s chair and Jane and Mike on the blanket. Steve gave him an easy little smile when he collapsed back into his seat, and Billy offered a tight one in return before looking away. He had on a cyan glow stick necklace, and, amid the setting sun and the ever-deepening shadows, it lit up his elongated neck in a neon halo; Billy’s own red wrist was glowing brighter by the second, but there was no comparison to that wash of blue.

Sitting there, he listened to the rest of them chat for a little while longer—Mike was some IT loser at Hawkins Local School District, and Hopper was actually interested in hearing how he was currently writing a grant for classroom Macintoshes—until it’d grown dark enough for the conversations to slowly die down in anticipation of the main event. It happened, literally, with a boom: one second, they were holding their respective sizzling sparklers, and Joyce was idly murmuring something to Hopper as Jane was laughing at Mike, and the next, everything was awash with a heart-stopping burst of color.

Billy’s heart began to race of its own volition, but he didn’t startle; Steve did, however, and Billy smirked at him in the brief seconds of darkness. But then he focused above, because it’d been a long, long time since he’d last seen a firework. Back in Los Angeles, he didn’t bother at all with Fourth of July celebrations: nine times out of ten, he was already busy covering shifts for cops that wanted to celebrate with their families, and, besides, a fireworks show was a fireworks show— _seen one, seen ’em all._ If he thought about it, he hadn’t been to an annual celebration since initially leaving Hawkins, but, now, he had to admit that it was a little more captivating than he’d previously given it credit for. It was a slice of life, a scene out of a classic movie, to be closely surrounded with acquaintances—or, dare he say it, _friends_ —on a seventy-degree summer night as they all watched a black backdrop light itself with explosions of colors, glowing particles that flew overhead and that faded as quickly as they’d burst into life. The hues played across Billy’s face, going from warm white to tinged with blue to something reddish and back again, periods of shadows interspaced between each boom.

The show was entrancing, of course, but not so much so that he didn’t notice the feeling, rather than the outright sight, of someone’s eyes trained in his direction. When he suddenly turned his head to the side, he saw that it was Steve openly gazing at him, as if he himself were the star of the show and the patriotic lights in the sky weren’t.

Billy stared back, and, for a moment, neither broke their eye contact; amid the overhead blasts, bangs, and crackles, they just looked at each other as if they were back on Steve’s couch, watching illegally recorded VHS tapes and eating homemade lasagna for dinner. Billy swallowed, but there was no moisture to be found in his mouth or throat. “What?”

“I was just thinking that I don’t—” Steve abruptly stopped. An explosion and sizzle of gold revealed his fingers twitching against his pant leg. When he spoke again, it was barely above a whisper. “Who even _are_ you?”

Billy breathed in, the wind carrying the acrid, metallic smell of smoke from the past-exploded fireworks. “The hell does that mean?”

“Never mind.” Steve turned away and tipped his head back to the sky, uncaring of the bomb that he’d so carelessly dropped into Billy’s lap in favor of watching the perceptible ones.

Billy followed suit, but the relaxed mood had been irrevocably broken. For the remainder of the show, the synapses in his brain furiously fired in a perfect embodiment of the finale; but, for the life of him, he could not figure out Steve’s meaning. When it was all over, he moved purely on autopilot as he helped carry lawn chairs back to Hopper’s truck, as he said his goodbyes (and a reiteration to be at their place on Sunday), and as he slid into his own truck with Steve again joining him in the passenger seat.

The drive back to Steve’s place was a stark contrast to before: where they’d previously had no problem filling the dead air with idle, trivial chatter, now they sat in silence, and even the presence of a strategically tuned adult contemporary radio station couldn’t alleviate the sudden discomfort.

About halfway from their destination, Billy couldn’t stand it any longer. He’d been playing over the entire night in his brain like a VHS tape and, in the same vein as that analogy, had rewound and paused on a part that he wanted to examine a little further. He cleared his throat before starting to speak, and Steve turned his head from the passenger window to look at the side of his face; except for the passing orange streetlights and their persistently luminous glow jewelry, the car was completely dark, and they were almost better off for it.

“Wheeler’s pregnant.” It wasn’t a question.

“Technically, her last name is Byers now,” Steve pointed out. “But…yeah, she is.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Uh, sure.” Half of Steve’s face was temporarily illuminated by orange and the other was contrasted by neon blue, but all of it contorted in advance.

Billy kept one loose hand on the steering wheel as he turned the radio down to a quiet murmur. “Is that why you’re doing this?”

He didn’t think that Steve would need him to explain further, because surely that topic, no matter how it was broached, had transcended vagueness much more than a while ago; case in point, Steve exhaled loudly, hands collapsed between his knees. “It’s not the only reason, but it did get me thinking.” Then he paused, clearly to recollect the breadth of their past conversations. “I told you my friends were having kids, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Billy said, giving one sharp nod for good measure. “But you didn’t specify _who_. It explains a lot—you two used to date, so you probably fantasized about having a little nuclear family together someday. Except now, it’s ‘someday’, and she’s moved on, and you haven’t.”

Steve’s little hiss sounded less like human frustration and more like an annoyed cat. “Is there a point to this?”

The weather and the roads were clear, leaving Billy to chance it and lock eyes with Steve for a few brief seconds. “Are you just trying to overcompensate because of some ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ type shit?”

There was a moment of silence between them again, and it was even worse than before. Even in the darkness, he could tell Steve’s irritation was quickly giving way to ire. “That’s—why do you care?” Steve ground out, and they both realized his mistake in the exact moment that he made it.

Just a few streets from the apartment, Billy preemptively stopped at a yellow stop light and used the extra seconds to put the truck into park, then he twisted in the driver’s seat to face him head-on. “I should think,” he said quietly, just barely louder than the radio, “that I have more of a vested interest than anyone else.”

Steve lifted a hand to his eyes and rubbed them longer than was strictly necessary. “Even so,” he murmured. “Why does it matter? Is it so bad to want what someone else has?”

The light turned from red to green, but Billy still took his sweet time putting it back into drive and pulling down the main road that would eventually splinter off to Steve’s street. “Not _bad_ ,” he admitted. “Just…it’s one thing to get baby fever ’cause of your friends, but are you going to be saying the same thing when actual shit hits the fan? When all’s said and done, and you’re all alone with nobody there to help you?”

“Didn’t you _just_ tell me earlier that I could call you if I get my heat later this month?” Steve retorted, scoffing. “What, did you already change your mind?”

As he pulled into the parking lot in front of Steve’s ridiculously nice apartment building, Billy very firmly said, “No.” He waited until he took a full inhale and exhale before he continued, all the while hating himself for relishing that Steve was hanging onto his every word. Billy wasn’t someone who believed in pulling punches; he operated on the ‘rip off the Band-Aid, skin and all’ method, where immediately dealing the worst, bluntest questions and answers would always be preferable to dancing around a difficult subject for an inane amount of time. And, yet, for every time that he should’ve handled something with more poise and did just the opposite, it seemed that all it took was one damn confrontation with Steve Harrington to leave him choking on the unsaid words on his tongue. “No, I didn’t. But _you_ might.”

He didn’t add the rest of what he was going to say— _because_ you _might still have time to change your mind_ —but he might’ve as well have, for the fight drained out of Steve in a fell swoop, making his shoulders slump against the seat rest. From the tight, tiny shakes of his head vibrating throughout his body, it almost looked like he was having a miniature seizure. “Is anyone really ever ready?” He bluntly asked.

Billy grunted, because he had nothing and everything to say to that, and he found it hard to decide between one or the other. He opted for neither. “I guess we’ll just have to see how this month goes.”

“Yeah,” Steve confirmed coolly, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the car door. “We will.”

Billy watched him go, knowing the moment was quickly slipping out of his fingers like sand, but he couldn’t think of a way to salvage the newly jagged situation between them until Steve was halfway across the parking lot.

“Hey!” He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled out of his window, not giving two shits about disturbing any neighbors at this time of night. It was a national holiday where loud noises and rowdy crowds at nighttime were not only common, they were expected—anyone who had a problem with that could take it up with Uncle Sam or just wait until morning. “You know I’m not tryin’ to be a dick, right?”

Steve turned around in the parking lot and walked backwards as he talked, his long-stretched shadow reflecting that. “Yeah, I know,” he called back, only to stop for a second to repeat, “I know.” He flipped back around before Billy could shout something back, which was good, because he’d been left completely at a loss for words.

In the distance, little pops of fireworks were barely audible over the crackling car radio playing a faint yacht rock song. _Happy birthday, America_ , he thought bitterly as Steve finally disappeared behind his front door. He shook his head as he pulled into drive again, debating pulling out that pack of cigarettes from his glove box at the next stoplight. _Here’s to two-hundred-and-nineteen more._

* * *

A quarter to midnight, one specific lakeside cabin in South Haven, Michigan was peacefully quiet, even though the distant outdoor festivities were anything but. Max, as one of the two inhabitants (quite unfortunately) still awake, listened to the sound of explosions and cheers echoing off the water, still somewhat miffed that Ronnie’s parents had practically traipsed off to bed at sunset and had missed all the fun. Unbelievably, they’d explained that they were chronically early risers, and even the promise of fireworks or lakeside concerts wouldn’t interfere with their ironclad sleep schedules. Max had bit her tongue and merely wished them good night, but one shared look with Ronnie had proved that he was in just as much disbelief as she was.

Speaking of which, he was in the shower now, and she was lying on the bed in today’s sweaty tank top and shorts as she semi-impatiently waited for her own turn. An idea to kill time popped into her head relatively quickly, and that was calling up Billy for a quick check-in; she’d been out on a boat for most of the day and hadn’t had the opportunity to speak to him before or afterwards, so she figured now was better than never. The late hour didn’t deter her, quite the opposite, because he was indisputably on the couch, sipping scotch, and watching late night television. And if he really were asleep, oh well, too bad—she already knew that he’d had today off, so it wasn’t like he’d be tired from a long shift or something important. The odds of him going out and celebrating on his own were zilch.

“Hey,” she greeted when the call connected in two brief rings. That was unheard of. “Happy Fourth.”

Without any warning, Billy suddenly went accusatory, as if he’d been the one to call her and not vice versa. “You tell that Dustin kid about me and Steve?”

Max was suddenly thankful for Ronnie’s parents, siblings, nephews, and nieces that were asleep in other rooms, because they were the only reason that she didn’t chew him out right here, right now. “What?” She hissed, getting up from the bed and stretching the phone cord to its limits as she moved towards the open sliding glass door. She figured she could speak a little louder if her words carried outside and weren’t boxed inside a second-floor room with thin walls. “ _No_ , of course not. God, hello to you, too.”

Billy’s breaths were heavy on the other line. “You sure?”

“You said it was a secret,” she reiterated firmly. “I talked to Dustin about Steve only because he did the same shit you’re doing now, but I haven’t said anything about your part of it to anyone, Billy, I swear.”

“Okay,” he uttered, voice now carefully neutral as his intensity faded away as quickly as it’d appeared. “…What’d you do today?”

Shaking her head, she muttered, “Why is everyone acting like this is some big conspiracy? I get it, you and Steve both want your respective privacies, but _come on_. It’s not like you’re planning to murder someone—just the exact opposite. Jeez.”

Even with the copious amount of waterproof sunscreen that she’d worn today, her shoulders were red and warm to the touch, and she alternated the phone between her hands to fan at the angriest patches of skin. It only served to worsen her mood: in addition to being sunburnt, she was sticky, tired, smelled like murky lake water, and now Billy was being Billy. _Great._

“Steve mentioned that little weevil being weird about it, that’s all. I just wanted to verify you hadn’t snitched.”

 _Honestly_ , she wanted to say, _how stupid do you think I am?_

“Well, I haven’t,” she bit back. “And you’re welcome. Now that the interrogation’s out of the way, how was _your_ day? How many times have you left the couch?”

His hesitation was palpable. “Wasn’t on it.”

“Oh?” Max raised her eyebrows. Ever since she’d put a bug in his ear about possibly, _maybe_ spending the Fourth with Steve, she’d had a hunch that it would happen one way or another. Now, after just three words, she had a very accurate idea of where this conversation was heading.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled. “Don’t play coy. I’m sure you already guessed that I spent it with Harrington.”

From where she stood at the edge of the glass door, she gave a throaty, restrained cheer that escaped into the cricket-filled night air like a loose tendril of smoke. “I knew it! What did you two end up doing?”

Billy sighed exasperatedly, clearly resigned to his fate. After a beat, he admitted, “Not much. Hung out at his place watching boob tube and then saw the fireworks with Jim, Joyce, Jane, and Mark.”

She was briefly surprised that he’d even done that much, but then she heard the last part and couldn’t help but snicker. It wasn’t the first time that he’d forgotten Wheeler’s first name, and it apparently wouldn’t be the last. “Uh, _Mike_?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure do, _Bobby_.” She laughed at his outraged scoff. “Anyways, I’m glad you had fun. I’ve gotta admit that I didn’t like the thought of you all alone, holed up in that house, while everyone else was out celebrating.”

He made another cantankerous sound. “It doesn’t matter,” he said dismissively. “It’s just another day.”

“I don’t like it happening on those, either.” In the bathroom behind her, the shower turned off, and she thought she’d never heard such a wonderful sound before. “But at least you’ve now got a friend here who’s your age. That’s new.”

“He’s a year older than me,” Billy shrewdly pointed out. If there was some hidden emotion on his face about a hundred miles away, she couldn’t hear it in his voice.

Rolling her eyes, she said, “Okay, now _you_ know what _I_ mean. I’m serious, Billy, it’s really sweet.” Ronnie was moving around the bathroom now, and she fully shut the glass door and walked back over to sit on the bed until he came out. “After everything with… _you-know-who_ , it’s nice to see you putting yourself out there again. Socially, I mean, don’t jump down my throat.”

Actually, she didn’t have a specific complicated relationship in mind—could be Neil, could be Michael, could be someone else that hurt him or broke his heart that she somehow didn’t know about—but, even without specifics, the point still stood. Whatever relationship Billy had with Steve wasn’t complex (well, baby scheme aside), and that was actually a good thing; there was nothing wrong with the two of them being casual friends over the next few months before he left for California again. Although it could be more than that, it didn’t _have_ to be.

From his silence, Billy seemed to be digesting the same thought. “Maybe,” he finally admitted. He cleared his throat, and Max could already hear him winding the conversation down. “In the meantime, just keep holding up your end of the bargain, yeah?”

Ronnie came out now, the cuffs of his rumpled pajama pants rolled up to his calves and toweling at his damp hair. He started to say something, and she held up a finger to him and turned back to the phone, pressing it tighter to her ear. “Don’t worry, officer,” she snorted. “I’m not going to blab. _Sir._ ”

“Good,” he said assertively, sidestepping her lazy attempts at some light levity. “Get some rest.”

“Yeah, you too,” she agreed, pulling the phone away from her ear. Then, abruptly, a metaphorical light bulb popped over her head, making her rush to pull the phone back to her face. She could see that Ronnie was so obviously standing there and listening in, but, at that very moment, she didn’t care.

“Hey, wait,” she said hurriedly, glad not to hear the dial tone already greet her. “That reminds me—did you hear anything about St—”

Billy’s tone was clipped, but if she had to hazard a guess, there was a ghost of a smile lingering there. “Goodnight, Max.”

After he’d hung up on her, she set the receiver on the base and shook her head. “Dick,” she said to herself, almost lovingly, and Ronnie seemed to take that as an invitation to question her.

“Billy?” He asked right off the bat, coming to sit on the other side of the bed. They hadn’t pulled the covers down yet, and neither made an effort to get up and do it.

“Yup.”

He paused, humming lightly. He was going for casual, but she could read him like a book; Ronnie wasn’t very subtle when it came to things that made him curious, and Max’s tight-knit fraternal relationship with her ex-stepbrother was one of them. “So…what was that about?”

“Ooh, sorry,” she smiled, not even remotely apologetic. She got off the bed again and leaned over to pat his upper arm, and, in the process, she snatched the wet towel from his hands to go throw it in the hamper. Knowing him, he’d otherwise toss it on the floor and leave it there overnight to get mildewy. “No can do.”

“Ah, come on, really?” He complained, but it was in good humor. “You two are so cliquish. Just one hint.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “It’s top secret—for now, at least. Just be patient.”

He rolled his eyes but didn’t push further, even though he clearly wanted to. As she walked into the bathroom and shut the door, she just prayed to a higher power that she wouldn’t have to strangle her college sweetheart tonight because he’d used up all the hot water.


	7. Chapter 7

_July 29, 1995_

The rest of July flew by in a blissful haze, although the wait created a growing unease in Billy that he couldn’t quite repress. As if he didn’t have enough reasons to dread coming home after a shift, he kept expecting to find an ominously blinking number on the answering machine awaiting him; it garnered a sigh of relief every time that there wasn’t, but that only lasted for a short little while, and the anxiety always returned worse than before. It all came to a head on the last Friday of the month, at around dinnertime, when Steve had called to disclose that he’d regrettably gotten his heat yesterday and to also passionately make a point of telling—not asking—Billy to come over tomorrow at a much later hour than before.

“Do _not_ show up at the crack of fucking dawn,” he’d stressed over the phone, absolutely in no mood to accept any arguments. “I mean it. Give me at least a few hours to hibernate, _please_.”

“Can I pencil you in at three o’clock?” Billy had snarked, expecting an irritated snort as a reply. He didn’t get it, probably because Steve had sounded as irascible as he probably felt.

“Can’t answer that,” had been Steve’s frank reply. “Just call in advance when you inevitably come over, and, knowing you, it’ll probably still be too early. At least gimme a head’s up so I can take a shower. Trust me, you don’t want to see this shit otherwise.”

Billy could only imagine what it was like at Casa Harrington at that very moment, and he hadn’t been even remotely ashamed of his curiosity. “When you put it like that, maybe I do.”

“Shut up. See you tomorrow.”

And on another weekend at the end of another month, Billy found himself, again, driving over to Steve’s place to, _again_ , donate his genetic material. The past few weeks certainly hadn’t made the situation any less weird, but enough of the initial shock had worn off by now; the skies were blue, the day was scorching hot, and the drive was uneventful, and those benign details alone made it easy to focus on anything other than the topic at hand. He figured it would only really hit him once he knew that it’d worked—or, if he stayed around in Hawkins long enough, a little visual proof definitely would—but, until that day came, he just didn’t want or need to think about it. It only served to give him a headache, and he had enough on his plate to contend with as is.

Once he’d parked, he strolled up the stairway and stopped in front of Steve’s door, but, when he went to knock on it, he was moderately surprised to see it slightly ajar. Cop instincts flipping on like a light switch, he immediately pushed it open and entered with a purpose, eyes scouring every inch for any signs of forced entry or foul play. Truthfully, his gut reaction didn’t see any real reason to be suspicious, but his alertness wouldn’t, couldn’t lessen until he’d properly scoped the place out, even though he was close to choking on the heavy-handed, sickly sweet smell of pheromones utterly overpowering Steve’s apartment. If anything, it was worse than last month, and it alone made doing something as simple as clearing a house an almost unfathomable chore.

“Yo, Harrington,” he called once he’d passed through the foyer, not completely able to keep the concern from creeping into his almost-strangled voice. He’d just spoken to Steve about a half an hour ago, at two-thirty, to let him know that he was coming over, and he’d taken no small amount of joy in realizing he’d woken him up. He knew that he should’ve felt remorseful, but if Steve wanted to be a parent so badly, he was going to have to get used to perpetual fatigue and, eventually, another human annoying him. _Consider it invaluable experience._ “You here?”

“Shower,” came the muffled response down the hall, and Billy sighed as he automatically moved towards it. He didn’t think for a second that he should take that as a sign to wait out in the living room, and, even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared that it was technically crossing a line.

The bathroom door was slightly agape, like the main one had been, and Billy opted to open it a hair more. Even over the steam and the clean smell of soap, those pheromones were more pungent here than anywhere else in the rest of the apartment, and he was almost embarrassed at how queasy the rush made him. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he paused to press two fingers into the inner corners of his eyebrows and worked at the rising tension there. “Why the _hell_ is your front door open?”

He couldn’t see Steve’s reaction, but the little surprised squawk that he tried to muffle upon hearing Billy’s much closer voice didn’t exactly work in his favor. “…Why do you think?”

“Last time I checked,” he said gruffly, speaking a little louder than it probably took for Steve to hear him over the running showerhead. “I’ve got opposable thumbs that can open doorknobs.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault that you stood outside the first time and caused a ruckus. My neighbors actually complained.”

“I—don’t do that again.” Shaking his head, Billy inhaled and held it, counting to some arbitrary number so he could lower his blood pressure a little. Steve had always been dense back in the day, but this was a new kind of stupid that he’d incorrectly assumed he was too grown up to partake in. “ _Jesus._ ”

The shower turned off. Apart from the sound of droplets of water dripping onto tile and the sound of the sliding glass door, there was no indication that Steve had heard him or, rather, had listened.

“Gimme a minute,” Steve’s voice echoed in the empty silence, as soon as he’d realized that Billy was clearly still outside the door. “I’ll be right out.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. “Yeah,” Billy conceded, already moving away from the bathroom and heading back in the direction that he came. He ended up at the island in the kitchen, sitting loosely on one of the barstools and lightly kicking his boots against the wood feet. Unfortunately, there wasn’t some kind of insemination kit pamphlet out here that he could peruse until Steve got dressed, but, at the edge of the countertop, an unopened letter propped up against a saltshaker happened to catch his eye. He wasn’t so sleazy or felonious that he’d dare open and read Steve’s mail, but he was sitting there with nothing to do, and he figured merely glancing at the envelope itself wasn’t intrusive; mailmen and postal workers did that every day, so why couldn’t he?

So, he poked at it a little bit, and it flopped over onto the counter in a way that, just in case, seemed unintentional enough. Glancing sideways at the hallway to make sure that Steve wasn’t already standing there like a murderer in a slasher film, he used his index finger to rotate it in his direction. Scanning the sender’s address, he found that it was from someone in New York City named Robin Buckley, a name that somehow sounded not altogether distant. His brow creased in an attempt at recognition—he wanted to say that he’d used to know who that was, vaguely, despite the passing years washing away any hope of putting a name to a face—but he abandoned that train of thought shortly thereafter, because there was something far more interesting to focus on. Smack dab in the center of the envelope was a loosely scribbled sentence in capital Sharpie lettering, practically shouting at him from the page:

**DONT OPEN TIL U CALL ME!!!**

By the time that Steve joined him in the kitchen, Billy had replaced the envelope, but he was still silently mulling over what its contents could possibly entail. He made a face at Steve’s entrance, trying to be inconspicuous about having to breathe through his mouth; as he’d told him before, Steve’s pheromones didn’t smell _bad_ , per se, but it _was_ unrelenting. And, as an alpha, being in the thick of it certainly didn’t make things a cakewalk, although he could deal with it if he set his mind to it.

That being said, he wasn’t going to stay here longer than necessary—even he had his limits.

“Hey,” Steve said simply, coming up to the island and leaning his crossed arms on the bar across from Billy. Here, in the flesh, Billy’s first thought was that he looked like hammered shit: there were deep, dark circles around the tight skin of his eyes, his lips were cracked, and his skin was as utterly devoid of color as it was dull. He had his hair parted and pushed over onto the side like usual, but, with it being damp, it was limp and a shade of almost black, and it was a sight that Billy wasn’t used to seeing; something about it created a contrast that didn’t suit Steve, making him look paler and sicklier than he already was. Apart from his bare feet, he had on real clothes this time—a plain black t-shirt with skinny jeans—and Billy wrinkled his nose at the sight.

“Doesn’t your skin, what, hurt?” He asked brashly, gesturing at Steve’s body. He still didn’t know much about heats, but he remembered what little Steve had told him, at least. “Especially with that shit on? Isn’t that what you told me last time?”

Steve blinked in surprise, looking down at himself as if he was just as confused by his own outfit as Billy was. “Uh…kinda.”

“Then why you wearin’ it?”

A wet strand of too-dark hair fell into Steve’s eyes, and he tucked it behind his ears with a weak, absentminded approach. “I…dunno, just seemed like the right thing to do.”

Billy leaned back in his seat and set an arm on the stool backing next to him, fixing Steve with an unrepentant, testifying-in-court-worthy stare in the process. “I swear to god, if it’s because you think you need to look ‘presentable’—” He used a lofty hand for finger quotes. “—with me here, you’re out of your fucking mind.”

Steve shifted back and rubbed at the uncovered skin on his arms, now looking at the floor over Billy’s shoulder. Billy couldn’t help but huff out a laugh at him now, because this little development was the saddest and (second) stupidest thing that Steve had done in at least the last ten minutes.

“Seriously?” Billy’s chuckles were quiet and without malice, but it still made Steve’s already pinched frown deepen further. “Go change, dumbass.”

“I—” Steve breathed out a sigh, shoulders slumping in easy defeat and plucking at the front of his shirt in a feeble attempt at getting some of the fabric off even a small section of skin. “Yeah, you’re right. Okay.”

As he moved to leave the kitchen, Billy automatically slid off the stool. “You got that cup nearby?” He was being impatient on purpose, because the faster that he could get out of here, the better for them both. Steve looked nothing short of awful, and Billy’s heart was racing in his ribcage just from being in Steve’s overtly hormonal vicinity. “Might as well get started now.”

Steve nodded languidly, waving Billy to follow him into the hall. When they got to Steve’s bedroom, Billy hesitated before passing over the edge of the carpet—he still had his boots on, and he’d already proven to Steve once that he had a good memory for the arbitrary things he’d previously said—and instead leaned up against the doorframe.

Walking over to his bed stand, Steve picked up a loose cup sitting there and turned halfway around to toss it underhanded at Billy, who caught it without any effort. Now in his hands, he rolled it between his palms and looked it over. The lid wasn’t yellow like last time, rather a shade of sky blue.

“This new?”

Steve was already at his dresser and pulling out a pair of sweatpants from a neatly stacked pile. “Uh, yeah?”

Billy stopped playing around with the cup, now holding it firmly in a one-handed grip and frowning down at it. “What’d you do with the old one?”

“Threw it out,” Steve shrugged, tossing a chosen pair of sweatpants atop his comforter and practically dropping onto the edge of it himself, then leaning his elbows on his knees and messily running his hands through his hair. He wasn’t looking at him, arms partially covering his face, but Billy didn’t miss how Steve kept wincing at his own touch. “It’s not like I was going to put it in my dishwasher and use it again.”

Sure, that made sense for someone as anal as Steve, and it should’ve been a sufficient answer, but Billy knew better and heard the unspoken actual explanation all the same.

_I didn’t think I’d need it again._

Steve was very obviously reflecting on that same hidden truth; in the pin-drop quiet, Billy could almost hear him swallow from here. “I can’t believe I had to ask you to do this again,” he murmured, but his following sigh was loud and heavy. “I really thought it was going to be a one-and-done thing.”

“I mean, that’s always a possibility, right?” Billy said, tone making it clear that it was a rhetorical question, and not one he expected Steve to have to answer. “I’m not busy, and it’s not like I don’t have plenty of cum. So, it’s not really an issue.”

Despite his drawn attitude, that managed to draw a choked chuckle from Steve’s almost-smiling lips. “Okay, thanks for sharing that.” However, the sudden levity was fleeting, and he resumed his passive, lethargic state a beat later. “It’s still not what I imagined.”

“None of this is,” Billy said honestly, never one to mince words. “But that’s just the way life goes.” He waited for Steve’s response—in this case, Steve’s head bobbing in silent agreement—until he could ask, “Anyways, bathroom again?”

“You can use my room this time. I don’t care.” Steve was now cupping his forehead with a hand, looking so weak and so weary that Billy realized he was actually finding him pitiable. “Wherever you want.”

“Hey,” Billy said sharply, immediately regretting how tactlessly and uncouthly he was handling an already awkward situation. “You…good?”

Even a blind man could tell him that Steve was clearly anything but, but it was worth an attempt, if only to be polite.

“Yeah,” Steve mumbled, obviously lying through his teeth. “Yeah, just really tired. Don’t worry about it. Thanks, though. For asking.”

As he spoke, Billy progressively inched further and further away from Steve’s nondescript bedroom; he hadn’t even bothered to look it over for any clues or hints of Steve that nobody else saw, because with him sitting there in it and not feeling good, refraining from rubbernecking his most intimate space was the least he could do. Besides, between the cream-colored curtains and navy bedspread, there wasn’t much else of note. It was all regular bedroom-adjacent furniture and no extra frills like hanging photos or bric-à-bracs; come to think of it, that described the rest of Steve’s place, too—it was comfortable, but also impersonal and plain, as if he’d only moved in recently and had unpacked but hadn’t gotten around to adding any personal touches to make it a home. That realization was as equally depressing as Steve’s current mood.

“Give me fifteen, and I’ll get out of your hair,” Billy stated, needing to say something to fill the silence. He couldn’t just slip away without preamble, even though he wanted to. “You’re not up to shooting the shit, I can tell.”

“That’s not—” Steve stopped himself. This time, Billy didn’t know what he was about to say. “Thanks.”

And that was his cue to slip away, to head down the hall and enter the white-tiled and white-walled bathroom, where humidity still lingered from Steve’s earlier shower. There was still condescension at the edges of the mirror, and he went to wipe it away with the hanging hand towel, but he stopped; what he was about to do didn’t require a reflection, quite the opposite. While balancing on one foot, he leaned over the sink to yank the door closed, but it was a symbolic gesture, considering Steve didn’t have it in him to enter, even if he wanted to. _Not that he would_ , Billy mentally amended. _Ah, fuck it, shut up, whatever._

The actual process was as unglamorous and wildly unsexy as it’d been before: as soon as he’d unscrewed the cup and set it onto the corner of the sink counter, he leaned up against a wall and off to the side of the mirror, again, so as not to watch himself masturbate like a total narcissist scumbag. It was a good thing that he didn’t bother with the ungodly skintight jeans that he used to back in the day, which used to be so snug that it was like wearing a baseball glove as a second skin. They’d admittedly looked better than the fitted but much less restrictive boot-cut pair that he wore now, but these allowed proper blood circulation to his dick and his legs, so, it was a fair trade. As he unbuttoned and unzipped, he inhaled a deep breath and held it until his lungs were aching. His skin was already prickling in anticipation for his own touch, and when he pushed into his boxers—another beneficial change, considering he didn’t used to wear any until he’d entered the academy—to palm at himself there, his exhale came out in a stutter.

He didn’t rush, had never seen the point, but he didn’t take his sweet time, either. With his previous-life experiences as a sex worker, he was down for anything ranging between ridiculously fast and tortuously slow, but, on his own, he liked to strike a happy medium. Either way, he’d get there sooner or later, even if he did get caught up thinking about how Steve was outside and acutely waiting for him to finish, although it didn’t matter as much today. He didn’t like to think of Steve at all in these moments, because it just made everything that much weirder, and he couldn’t explain why it made his heart surge out of misguided excitement. When the building pleasure crescendoed to just being shy of his climax, Billy stopped to grab the cup so hard the plastic flexed in his grip, all the blood in his brain currently southernmost and thusly preventing him from feeling any typical feelings of shame or hesitation for about what was about to occur.

When he finally came, _hard_ , his head knocked back against the wall, and it took a few minutes before his nerves and enough of his senses could sort themselves out before the throbbing pain could set in. Every muscle in his body went as taut as a string on a guitar, millimeters away from snapping, and a strangled groan bubbled past his lips as, slowly but surely, he returned to his mortal coil and his brain flickered back to life like a television set. He didn’t need to open his eyes to set the cup gingerly back onto the counter, and, still out of his boxers and jeans, he rested his now-tender head lazily against Steve’s bathroom wall; he waited there until his panting could even out to regular breaths with the occasional mild hitch.

After a few minutes had passed, Billy curled his lip at the cup and screwed the lid back on, normally not disgusted by his own release, but to see it bottled up wasn’t necessarily an attractive concept. Once he’d utilized a few tissues, he tucked himself back in and double-checked his zipper—he was going to run errands after this, and allowing such a basic mishap was the very last thing that he needed to deal with today—before washing his hands for the bare minimum time that it took to feel acceptably clean. He semi-avoided his own gaze in the mirror all the while, not really feeling like facing himself for at least a few hours after doing something so indecorous, which, admittedly, wasn’t a reaction unique to this situation. Once he’d finished, he wiped his wet hands onto his pants, took the cup in hand, and flicked the lights off.

If he had to hedge a guess, Harrington had migrated to the living room, so he headed towards that direction. However, he found the couch cold and the room empty, and, on his way back to the hall, the kitchen was just as solitary. There were two closed doors in the hallway, although one had to be a storage closet, but he didn’t spare them a second glance as he headed back to Steve’s bedroom, where he must still be. And, sure enough, that’s where Billy found him, fast asleep and curled up on top of the covers; he’d kept the black shirt but had changed into that pair of sweatpants, and his discarded pair of jeans hung off the footboard of the bed.

A motionless Billy stared at the sight, highly uncomfortable with the vulnerability and having unwittingly breached Steve’s privacy. With one hand, he leaned down to unlace the ties of his boots enough to kick them off at the entrance of the bedroom, padding across the carpet to set the cup unscathed at Steve’s nightstand. He was torn between waking Steve up to let him know and just letting him sleep, because, up close and without any constraints, he looked somehow worse than when he was awake; at least his sleep didn’t seem fitful, and, while Steve’s face was as drawn and white as a sheet, it wasn’t pinched or creased in exhaustion. Ultimately, the oddness of the situation made him lamentably reach out and steadfastly tap him on the shoulder until his eyes groggily blinked open.

“Harrington,” he said neutrally, neither whispering nor speaking at normal volume. It took Steve more than a minute to get his bearings together, and Billy was displeased to see the crease immediately return to Steve’s brow upon returning to consciousness. He pantomimed once in the direction of the fateful cup and then set his hands in the seat of his back pockets. “It’s done.”

Steve, now fully awake and aware of the situation, swore at himself. “Ah, shit—yeah, okay, I’m up.”

“I just wanted you to know before I head out,” Billy told him, pretending the mood was light even if it were anything but. “Go back to sleep, who cares. It’s not going anywhere.” Then, he considered that for a moment. “How long’s this shit last?”

Steve pushed himself up and threw his legs over the bed, urgently rubbing at his eyes for longer than was probably necessary. “Not as long as I wish it would,” he said darkly. He moved his hands away, tipped his head up to Billy, and gave him a smile that turned out more like a grimace. “Thanks again.”

“Sure,” Billy clenched his teeth. “No problem.” He walked away from Steve’s bed and went back to his shoes, infinitely glad that his part in this was complete. As he retied the laces, he couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t strictly pertinent to the situation; and, although it went without saying, he figured Steve could use the reassurance right about now.

“Next month,” he began. Steve’s tired eyes were trained on him and searching, but he just had to get this out of the way now so that he wouldn’t have to later. “Same offer still stands.”

Steve just nodded stiffly, for this was very clearly the last prospect that he wanted to entertain; he hadn’t even attempted round two yet, and, here Billy was, already preparing for it to fail. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Yeah,” Billy half-agreed, bending up now that his boots were back on and loitering in the hallway for another few seconds. Steve was eyeing the cup instead of him now, and he used that as an excuse to finally turn away. It was a testament to Steve’s condition that he didn’t stop him to say any departing pleasantries, not that Billy minded in the first place—he couldn’t stand small talk in general, but, then again, anything was better than the alternative of pure silence. If he’d known earlier that Steve was in such rough shape and desperately needed extra sleep, he would’ve come over much later than he actually had; but he couldn’t change the past, and at least it was out of the way for them both. Now, the only thing left to do was wait. _Again._

The overly precautionary side of him couldn’t stand leaving Steve’s front door unlocked, so he switched the latch before he shut it and, in a contrast of earlier, made sure to pull it firmly shut. He realized that both measures were surely unnecessary, considering Steve lived in a very nice section of town, but the principle of the matter still stood. Once that was done, he headed back to his truck as leisurely as possible, suddenly not in the mood to run about town. Perhaps his sudden bout of lethargy was due to how he could barely sleep last night out of anticipation, or perhaps it was just a lingering aftermath of his recent solo orgasm; regardless, Steve had the right idea of napping the afternoon away, and he intended on copying it once he got back home.

 _If I’m lucky, maybe I can just sleep through the month_ , he thought as he stepped into the driver’s seat and kept the door open for a minute to ventilate the trapped, stagnant heat that was there. Billy tipped his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes, the juxtaposition of the inferno-like truck air and the cool summer breeze on his left side almost lulling him to not-so-golden slumbers right here, right now. _And then the month after that, and that, and the next eighteen years._

* * *

Robin loved many things about Heather, but her particular obsession with crime television shows wasn’t one of them.

Saturday night found them perched on the couch, watching a re-run of last night’s _Dateline NBC_ , with Heather enraptured with the story of a shootout between a driver and law enforcement in Montana and with Robin anything but. She watched it less for Heather’s sake and more to at least understand her subsequent in-depth theories of who-did-what-and-why, but she could bite her tongue for only so long. On a commercial break halfway through, Robin turned to look at her with a pained expression that was almost Oscar-worthy. “I’ll give you literal money if we can watch _anything_ else.”

“Excuse me,” Heather held up a finger, eyes still glued on some nondescript commercial. “I didn’t say anything when you made us rent _Pulp Fiction_ last week for the eightieth time.”

Robin scoffed. “And? It’s a masterpiece. I swear to god, I’m always _this_ close to saying ‘fuck it’ and getting my hair cut short and dyed black.” She’d only just gotten those chunky blonde highlights that she’d been eyeing for weeks, and she was currently happy with her new haircut, but that austere bob with bangs was something that’d been taunting her since seeing the movie several times in theaters last year.

Thankfully, Heather was there to veto her outlandish impulses again, as she was graciously wont to do. “Nah, I like your hair,” she said, leaning over to play with a disconnected layer. “But you should get a wig for Halloween, ’cause you _do_ look just like Mia Wallace. Eerily so.”

“Thank you,” Robin grinned. She’d secretly thought the same thing, and it was always good to get proper validation. “But what about our couples costume? Like, who would you go as—Honey Bunny? Fabienne? The cab driver?”

“Quentin Tarantino,” Heather said very seriously, making Robin double over in laughter.

“Oh, of course. All you need is a red bathrobe and a camera, et voilà!”

That made Heather join in, and it took a few good seconds before their peals of laughter eventually died down to quiet chuckles.

“Now, back to the matter at hand,” Robin said, wiping at her eyes with both hands. “Can we agree that this show is exploitative, sensationalized garbage and change the channel?”

“Absolutely not.” Just then, the cordless phone in their bedroom started to ring, immediately punctuating the conversation. “You gonna get that?”

Robin threw her a sidelong look as she got off the couch, fixing the cuffs of her shorts as she went to retrieve the black plastic handset. As soon as she’d picked it up, she headed immediately back in the same direction, not actually bothering to answer it until she’d flopped back on the couch next to Heather, who’d lowered the volume of the television set in preparation.

She pressed the button and held it loosely to her face. “Robin,” she said easily, although she had a slight hunch of who it may be. Heather even inched in a little closer so she could decipher who the mystery caller was.

“Am I on speakerphone?” Steve immediately asked, without any real urgency. “Is your roommate home?”

“Mara’s out watching a friend perform at a drag bar in the Bronx,” she said, winking at Heather when she silently clapped her hands together. _Dateline_ now forgotten, Heather even went ahead and turned off the television entirely, because Steve’s weird little ongoing baby saga was universally their favorite show. “As for your first question, no, not yet. Can I?”

They’d only recently replaced their old wired phone and answering machine with a model that boasted a cordless receiver and a speakerphone to boot; it’d already proven to be a worthwhile investment, especially with moments like these. Robin liked it purely because it made her feel like she was a bigwig executive in a boardroom meeting, even as she was gossiping with an old friend about having babies with ex-bullies.

“Go ahead,” Steve granted. Robin got up from the couch again and gestured for Heather to follow, because the base with the speaker was currently in their room for the indiscernible future. They didn’t keep phones out in common areas—Mara had her own line in her room as well—and, although unusual, it was a system that worked for them. They traipsed back to their bedroom and both sat on Heather’s side of the bed, and Robin pressed the lime speaker button and set the now-unneeded handset on the side table for the time being.

Steve, still waiting patiently, didn’t say anything else until he got the okay from Robin to continue. Once she did, Steve’s disembodied voice filled the room, although the speaker was tinnier and more staticky than he sounded in real life. “We good?”

“Good,” she confirmed.

“Heather’s there, too, isn’t she?”

Almost sheepishly, Heather said, “Hi, Steve.”

“Hey, Heather,” he replied, huffing out a laugh.

“Enough niceties,” Robin said impatiently, eager to hear what he had to say. “So, how’d it go today?”

They hadn’t spoken since Thursday, when Steve had called to vent about unexpectedly getting his heat. It was the only reason that she even knew about Billy coming over today so Steve could try again, because, in general, Steve was annoyingly lax about _those_ kinds of details. She’d tried to wheedle out of him what’d happened at the end of June, but all Steve had said was something about ‘respecting privacy’—whatever that meant.

Even now, he played the cryptic card. “How would I know?” He stated carefully. “It’s gonna be at least another month before I get any results back.”

Robin couldn’t roll her eyes at him, so she did it at Heather instead. “Not _that_ ,” she amended. “I know how conception works. I meant with _Billy_.”

She still remembered telling Heather that little nugget of gold, about how Steve was attempting to have a baby with her old coworker, a fellow ex-lifeguard. Heather’s initial reaction had been some sort of fish-like gape, and her eyes had stayed dinner plates for the rest of the night. Robin had loved every second of it.

“Oh. Fine? To tell you the truth, I don’t really know. I was pretty out of it earlier. After he left, and with everything…finished, I went back to sleep for about six hours, and at least now I don’t feel as much like dying.”

Heather’s eyes weren’t as oversized as they’d been that first time, but they were just as unblinking. “Out of everyone in the world, I still can’t believe it’s _my_ Billy,” she murmured. When Robin gave her a disturbed look, it made her face color a little. “Not like that. You know what I mean. It’s just weird that it’s the same Billy that I used to hang out with.”

“Well, neither can I, but believe it,” Steve said, a little oddly.

Robin’s gawk had turned into a frown. “What exactly did you two do when you weren’t playing _Baywatch_ together?”

Heather shrugged. “We had a lot of fun that summer. And, before you start freaking out,” she specifically pointed at Robin, “ _not_ sexually, geez. We were the only two lifeguards that didn’t want to go home extra early, so we would stay after hours to clean the pool, and the filters, and check the pH levels, and then we’d go put our paychecks to use at some local hamburger stand. At one point, we even went swimming at Lover’s Lake, which is counterintuitive for two teenagers who worked at a pool, I know.”

“What, like skinny dipping?” Steve’s voice came out strangled. Robin noticed it, but Heather was too preoccupied with her little travel back in time, her eyes glazed over with the corners of her lips upturned.

“No…but we didn’t have our swimsuits on, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Robin just waved her hands. “We’re not going there. Anyways, Steve, what were you saying?”

“Nothing, just that I won’t know if it worked for a few more weeks. Again.” Steve cleared his throat. “And heavy emphasis on the ‘if’.”

Robin and Heather looked at each other, and suddenly the little foray into Steve’s world wasn’t as much fun as it’d been a few minutes ago. He sounded utterly dejected, which wasn’t entirely abnormal for Steve to sound like on his worst days, but this was different. He wasn’t tired from traveling for work or simply sapped from that time of the month—this was his personal life not working out the way that he’d planned, and it was understandably disappointing.

“Chin up, buttercup,” Robin said placidly, but her concern was apparent and in earnest. “Many people don’t conceive on their first few tries, especially if they’ve been on blockers for a long time.”

“She’s right,” Heather piped up. “We have some friends about a block from here—Tilly and Tara—and, even with Tara being an alpha, it took them two years in total to have their daughter.”

Apparently, that’d done nothing to alleviate his worries, for Steve just deeply sighed into the phone. “I don’t even have six more months. Billy’s planning on leaving in December.”

“You’re gonna hate me for this, but I have a suggestion.”

“Oh, no,” Steve groaned. “Robin…”

“Do you know what I’m going to say?” She retorted.

“I know that whatever it is, it’s not going to be good.”

Heather made a face that also expressed her agreement, but Robin ignored them both. “I was going to say that, maybe, you should look into the more _typical_ approach.”

“If that’s code for ‘have sex with Billy’, then you’re lucky you’re in New York right now, ’cause I’d be laughing in your face.” To prove his point, Steve barked out a forced laugh.

“Keep it up,” Robin smirked. “But you’re an omega, and he’s an alpha. Let’s not pretend that that doesn’t mean business.”

As Steve quieted back down, there was a lengthy pause on the other line. “That doesn’t explain your friends,” he stated. “You just said that one of them is an alpha, so it’s clearly not infallible.”

Heather took this one. “True, Tara is, but Tilly’s a beta, though. And, really, it came down to her, because she’s the one with a history of endometriosis.”

“And yet they still managed,” Robin agreed. “You don’t have that, so you’re already doing better than them. Just don’t get discouraged, and, y’know, think about what I said.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” he said sarcastically. “While you’re at it, please enlighten me how you think I should go about making such a request.”

“Is it so hard to call him up and pour on the sugar?” At the sound of Steve’s laughter again, genuine this time, she stressed, “No, seriously, I’m asking.”

“Uh, _yeah_. I don’t know how much of Billy’s personality that you remember, but just because he’s not mean anymore doesn’t mean he’s not intimidating as shit. Come on, he’s not just going to agree to have sex with me just because I asked nicely.”

“I mean, you already got him to agree to be the biological dad, right?” Robin pointed out. “If he’s cool with that _and_ donating at least twice, then he shouldn’t be the type to get cold feet over going all the way.”

“I swear, you act like I’m a lab rat or something.” Steve sighed again, but it was exasperated instead of depressed, which Robin considered as a slight win. “Why don’t I just give you his number, and you can just go play matchmaker for real?”

Robin’s eyes sparkled, and it was Heather’s turn to groan. “A fantastic idea. One of the best you’ve ever had.”

“Oh, god,” Heather covered her face with her hands, leaning in to stage whisper directly into the speaker. “Please don’t, Steve.”

“Don’t worry,” Steve promised her. “I’m not that dumb.”

Robin crossed her arms, twisting away from the phone to affect a look of mock hurt at Heather. “I’d make an amazing Cupid, and you both know it.”

“Sure you would,” Steve dryly replied, a faint scuffing sound coming from his end. If she had to guess, he was in the kitchen and had just moved a stool along the wood floors. “Anyways, I didn’t tell you that I got your cryptic murderer ransom note envelope yesterday.”

It was a good thing that Mara wasn’t home, because Robin’s little squeal of excitement surely would’ve woken her up. “Ooh, finally!” She cheered, clapping her hands together. “I’ve been waiting for this!” But she froze as she did the math in her head. “Damn, I sent that out well over a week ago. It should’ve been there on, like, Tuesday. Our neighborhood post office is useless.”

“God only knows what this is about,” he muttered.

“Before you say anything, I know it’s a tad preemptive, but, yeah, go ahead and open it!”

Heather was watching her from out of the corner of her eye, a small smile on her face at Robin’s little plan coming to fruition. They couldn’t see Steve open the envelope, but it was easy enough to imagine from the crinkling paper sounds on the other end.

“You are officially the weirdest friend ever,” he said wearily, clearly now looking at the envelope’s contents and making Robin snort-laugh at his audible confusion. “And, yes, that includes Dustin, so don’t ask.”

The truth was, ever since he’d planted the seed in her head, she’d become very invested in her future role as a godmother. A few weeks ago, that’d manifested in her getting an idea to go window-shopping around little artisanal shops in Manhattan to look for the cutest (weirdest) baby-adjacent items that she could find, and, naturally, she’d roped Heather into it. Heather was the one with the vintage Polaroid camera after all, and it’d been an easy sell; anything was better than sitting around the house all weekend, every weekend, like what they were currently doing now. They would’ve gone out today to continue their weird scavenger hunt, but Robin had postponed it until they could send the first batch out to Steve and gauge his reaction. Speaking of which, by now, he had to be sifting through each of the included Polaroids, because he’d gone speechless.

“What?” Robin asked, falsely innocent. “It was Heather’s idea.”

Heather pulled back and bunched up her shoulders, vehemently shaking her head at Robin with full eye contact.

“Okay, it was mostly my idea,” Robin admitted. “But Heather helped.”

Steve’s voice was hushed, bordering on whispering. “What exactly _are_ these? Did you rob some local baby store?”

“Hey, he figured it out!” She joked, poking Heather’s arm with the bony part of her elbow. “No, but seriously—I know I can’t be there to help decorate, so the least I can do is give you some inspiration for the nursery or ideas of things to buy.” When Steve didn’t say anything, she continued. “Aren’t they cute?”

“…Is this a black crib with a _pentagram_ carved into it?”

“Ha, yeah! That’s from some occult shop nearby, and it’s my favorite.” There was a dreamy look on her face now. “Gotta say, I’m sorta considering adopting a kid just so we’d have a reason to buy it.”

Heather snorted. “Keep dreaming.”

“This one is just a…fur baby blanket?”

“Donated human hair,” Robin corrected, snickering. “Ethically sourced, totally vegan, and—”

“Steve,” Heather interrupted. “I’d like to formally apologize on her behalf.”

Robin swatted at her. “So,” she said eagerly. “What d’you think?”

A rustling sound was enough proof that he was closely looking through each of them, and what Robin wouldn’t give to be there in Hawkins to see the look on his face as he did so.

“The horrifying ones aside,” Steve eventually managed. “Some of these are actually really nice. I like the Barney rattle, and…the striped yellow onesie.”

“Yay, those were mine!” Heather exclaimed, turning a smug face onto Robin, who merely rolled her eyes. “See? Told you. Not everyone likes your freaky sensibilities.”

“I—thank you. Both of you. This was…a really sweet gesture.” Steve still sounded mystified and utterly at a loss for words, but it was obvious that his appreciation was genuine.

“Just so you know,” Robin interjected, suddenly struck by a certain thought. “None of these are gifts—yet. We don’t actually have anything picked out, but, when we do, it’ll be a surprise.”

“Okay, what you said before— _that_ is preemptive. Don’t buy anything just yet. I don’t want you wasting your money on my failures.” He’d tried for a joke, but there was too much bitterness still lingering behind his words for it to be convincing.

“Believe us, Steve,” Heather said softly. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“I hope,” he replied, exhaling as he spoke, and Robin could see him nodding like a bobblehead in her mind’s eye. “It just sucks right now. Being stuck in limbo, that is.”

Robin cleared her throat. “I want you to know, I could’ve made a sex joke right there,” she said proudly. “But I abstained for your sake.”

Even when he was down, Steve didn’t miss a beat. “Well, aren’t I a _sucky_ one,” he deadpanned.

“A dad joke…” Robin gasped, holding her hands out. “You’re _ready_. One chicken bone crib mobile, coming right up.”


	8. Chapter 8

_August 25, 1995_

Despite its ordinary beginning, that one day begat a butterfly effect that set a literal lifetime of events in motion, wherein everything changed forever.

It’d been the last Friday of August, as hot and humid as ever, and there hadn’t been much going on around a quiet town like Hawkins; in comparison to Los Angeles, there’d been absolutely jack shit. Billy got up, went about his daily routine, headed to the department, and did the same old, same old: paperwork in the morning, surveillance in the early afternoon, and, in between, handling citizens’ inane questions and benign disputes. The day went by fast, thanks to his perception of time being skewed from only working almost two-thirds of a regular shift: on Wednesday, he’d gotten Hopper’s permission ahead of time to leave early, because he’d finally started the process of putting the house on the market two weeks ago, and he had a follow-up appointment with the realtor and her photographer. It was a hassle, but it seemed that his little nightmare down memory lane was finally starting to come to an end, and Billy was gladder for that than anything else.

Still, homes around here didn’t sell overnight, and this house was no different. Upon her first look through, the realtor had expressed her assurance that the inside was in great shape and would undoubtedly appeal to prospective buyers, but the outside would be the biggest hurdle to overcome. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it, this needs some TLC,” she’d said, smacking her gum against the roof of her mouth and prodding at one of the loose screens on the porch, one of the few still there. “But a fresh coat of paint and some minor landscaping will do just nicely.” Billy, holding her clipboard for her, had regrettably agreed, only because gussying up this dump would mean more potential offers and-slash-or a little extra revenue, as well as something to do with his free time instead of sitting around and smoking more cigarettes than necessary. As much as he loved wasting his finite time here on God’s green earth with his dad’s affairs— _not_ —he’d do whatever it’d take to wash his hands of the matter, so the decision really had been a no brainer.

By the time that nine o’clock rolled around, he was sitting in his dad’s worn-out La-Z-Boy, nursing a glass of store-bought iced tea, and idly focusing on the muted television ahead. The photo session a few hours earlier had gone well, for all intents and purposes, but he still felt discontented with his outdoor improvements, considering the subject in question was still a hefty work in progress. Just last weekend, he’d thrown out the mesh screens that were beyond repair (namely, all of them) and had ripped out those horrible undead shrubs, and that already made a huge difference, but too much more needed done before they could take any photographs of the house front. _To be completed_ , he’d thought sourly. _There’s only so much I can do at once._

To top it all off, an inexplicable feeling had been niggling at him for at least two or three days, personally contributing to his ever-present mental disarray. He knew he was forgetting something important, and it was driving him crazy trying to pin it down; even now, a headache was prickling at his temples for his efforts. Determined not to exacerbate it, he forcibly made himself decompress and enjoy the blissful quiet, something that he greatly deserved after another workday and a full afternoon spent dealing with his father’s stupid-ass house.

It all went to shit in the most comical of ways.

One second, he was watching ESPN like a normal person, and the next, he was dangerously close to spilling his iced tea over the recently polished wood flooring. The game had gone to commercial—the Dodgers were up against the Phillies, and it didn’t help his mood that they were currently losing—and an advertisement had appeared on the screen, one for a big-box department store hosting a back-to-school sale. He’d seen it a couple times tonight already, but, this time, something about it succeeded in jogging his last brain cell like a flash of lightning in the dark of the night; a perfect storm of recognition.

_School—kid—baby._

_Steve._

_Heat—end of the month._

_Fuck._

“Fuck,” he hissed, immediately jumping to his feet, slamming his glass onto the coffee table, and heading over to the phone on the wall. As impossible as it sounded, this past month had flown by faster than July had, what with work and selling the house preoccupying his schedule, and there hadn’t been much time to get hung up on the Steve situation. In fact, he hadn’t even seen him in almost four weeks: every Sunday since the Fourth, Billy had been going over to Hopper and Joyce’s place for dinner and Mexican Train, and, eventually, Steve had made good on his own rain check at the end of July. Among company, there hadn’t been an opportunity to speak alone—much less about their shared dirty little secret—and it hadn’t mattered much anyways; it’d been still too soon for actual news, and, that night, they’d all been too focused on trying to end Jane’s inhumane win streak, because the girl was a machine at playing dominoes. If Billy didn’t know any better, he’d say that she secretly had superpowers.

He didn’t know what it said about him that, at this point, he knew Steve’s number by heart; due to his line of work, he was more than decent at remembering arbitrary number combinations, and he chose this explanation so as not to dwell on it further. But there were more pressing matters at hand, because, from the eruption of butterflies in his chest cavity, he’d finally pinpointed down what’d been plaguing him for a few days. That was both a relieving and disquieting thought, emphasis on the latter.

“Pick up, pick up,” he growled, getting increasingly irritated at the unending sound of the busy signal. It would be just his fucking luck for Steve to be away from home on one of his little art vendor field trips. “ _Come on._ ”

The line clicked. “Hello?”

“Goddamn, _finally_ ,” Billy scrubbed a hand over his chin and jaw, hating how much his fingers were trembling.

“Uh, yeah, I couldn’t find the phone,” Steve replied, sounding startled now. “Something the matter?”

Billy barked out a laugh, incredulous. “Is this a joke? Am I coming over tomorrow or next weekend or what?”

“Sorry?”

“ _Harrington._ ” He wasn’t in the mood for these kinds of games. What else did Steve possibly think he could be calling about? “What’s the verdict? Did _it_ work?”

“Oh…” Steve took a long minute to inhale and exhale in a form of rhythmic breathing. “No. It didn’t.”

“Damn.” Billy leaned up against the wall and shifted his feet to balance his weight. He hadn’t had a reason to think it would fail yet again, but crazier things had happened, and, awkwardness aside, at least it wasn’t a hard process to repeat. “Okay, well, I’m free for a little bit tomorrow.” He really had to work more on the unsightly house exterior, but he could spare an hour or two, especially when the midday sun was too hot to do anything worthwhile. “I know, I know, I’ll come over later and call before I leave here. Don’t need to tell me twice.”

“What?”

 _Jesus, is he high or just being stupid on purpose?_ “We gotta do this again, right?”

There was a lengthy pause, one that lasted too long to be considered innocuous. “No.”

“I don’t understand,” Billy said, momentarily closing his eyes and rubbing at the apex of his eyebrows with his thumb and index finger. “Didn’t you just say you got your heat this week?”

“Yeah,” Steve said simply, continuing his trend of monosyllabic responses.

“Then why wouldn’t I come over?”

“I don’t—” Steve started, but his deep sigh interrupted his next words. When he spoke again, it was insincerely cheery, like the verbal equivalent of artificial cherry cough drops. “It’s okay. Thanks for calling.”

Billy could tell he was seconds away from this conversation slipping through his fingers like water, and he gripped the phone in one hand while holding the telephone cord taut in the other. “Hold the fuck up—hey, don’t you hang up on me,” he snapped. “What’re you talking about?”

“I don’t need you to come over. For that,” Steve added softly, when it came out presumably harsher than intended.

“Why not?” Billy pressed, running his tongue along the sharp points of his molars. “You find someone else? You’re not going to offend me, so just spit it out.”

“No, I didn’t,” Steve mumbled. “It’s…because I’m not trying again. I’m done.”

That should’ve struck him speechless, but his mouth had always moved faster than his brain; it’d single-handedly gotten him into trouble several times as a kid, countless times as a teenager. He stared so hard at a knot in the wood floor that the edges of his vision started to turn black and fuzzy. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yeah,” Steve said bitterly, defeat seeping into his tone. “I’m just not going to bother with it anymore. It was a stupid idea anyways.”

Billy’s headache was only getting worse by the minute, quickly veering into migraine territory. But he was too frustrated to care, and, if he didn’t care about that, he surely didn’t give a fuck about what Steve had just said. “You home alone?”

Alarmed again, Steve stammered, “I always am…w-why?”

“I’m coming over,” he said brusquely, teeth clenched. “Have your door unlocked.”

“That’s not nec—”

“I _said_ , I’m coming over. Door. Unlocked.”

Smashing the phone back onto its hook to Steve’s protests, he crossed the room in three steps to get his car keys. He didn’t even bother to turn off the television, or the floor lamp, or remove the glass of iced tea from the coffee table, where it would surely leave a water stain in his prolonged absence. Leaving the house, getting into his car, and driving over to Steve’s was the definition of an out-of-body experience; he could faintly hear the rational part of his walnut-sized brain telling him to pull over and think this through, that it was Steve’s choice to give up, but Billy’s ire was like magma spilling out of a volcano. Steve had specifically wrapped him up in this, and there was no way that he was going to let him pull the rug out from under him _twice_.

Passing the top step of the stairway to Steve’s apartment floor, he braced himself for the front door to be very much locked, and he readied himself for the scene that he was more than ready to make this late into the evening. But it was equal parts surprising and disappointing to find the doorknob easily twist open, and he stepped through it to storm into the shadowed foyer. Like at his place, there was only one golden-hued light on in the whole apartment, and he automatically moved towards it. He still didn’t know his intent for coming over here, but, for good reason, he had the very heavy feeling that he’d started something that he couldn’t stop the very second he’d walked through the door. Like an eerily silent, deceiving calm that came before an approaching thunderstorm, something big was about to happen. He could only hope it would end well, but he’d never been one to make promises.

* * *

For a good minute or two after Billy had hung up on him, a flood of emotions paralyzed Steve; shock and confusion were primary, but there was also a good amount of anger there, too. Billy didn’t get to make that decision for him—if he decided he was done trying, then that’s all there was to it. Then again, if he were being honest, he also felt a rational amount of fear, because it was incredibly ominous to think of Billy currently racing over here to confront him for an admittedly understandable reason. He might’ve mellowed out in the years apart, but Billy had had a nasty, volatile temper back in the day; once that venom was in your veins, it spurred a kind of rage that never truly went away. Steve didn’t want to think that he would come over just to start another physical fight, but no amount of logic could make the situation any better, nor could it alleviate his apprehension.

In the meantime, he did as Billy had demanded and got up to unlock the front door. He wasn’t going to wait there or stare out of a window until his arrival, so he returned to the couch, picked up a nearby novel, and tried to keep his cool, all while straining to hear every faint noise filtering in through the open windows.

Less than fifteen minutes later, which, granted, was enough evidence to support Steve’s theory that Billy had brazenly broken the speed limit to get there, he heard some muffled stomps precede the furious rattling of the door knob. Steve’s lungs felt too small for his chest as he took in a gulp of air, and he twisted around in his couch seat to find Billy already standing there, breathing heavily, his striking face screwed up in annoyed disapproval. As expected, anger rolled off him in waves.

“Uh,” Steve swallowed, tossing his borrowed copy of _The Rainmaker_ in the direction of the coffee table. It’d been just for show, considering that he hadn’t been able to focus on more than one word at a time. “Hey?”

Billy’s muscular arms were tightly crossed over his thin three-quarter-sleeve dark gray shirt. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Listen, Billy—”

“Don’t you ‘listen, Billy’ me,” he snarled, blowing air out of his nose like a furious bull. “All it takes is two tries, and suddenly you’re done?”

Steve got crabby whenever he felt poorly, especially during the worst of his heats, and it was almost too easy to now lean into that tetchiness and mirror Billy’s own outrage. “Yeah, I am,” he snapped, getting up from the couch and walking over to face Billy so he could use what little extra height he had as an advantage. “If it would’ve happened by now, it…would’ve. And we could do this little dance for the rest of the year that you’re here, but it’s not worth the inevitable disappointment. Or me swallowing my pride to ask you to come over again and again.”

Billy’s fingers twitched, as if he wanted to use them to poke at Steve’s chest. He almost wished that he would dare. “You asked _me_ to donate. You got _me_ to agree. Do you think I give a fuck how many times I have to come over?”

“Yeah, I do,” Steve retorted. At Billy’s newly inflamed look, he shook his head and amended, “Okay, if you don’t, then _I_ definitely do.” He didn’t know what else to say other than the truth, but something told him that lying probably would be preferable. “Maybe I’ll try again in a few years, but I’m calling it quits for right now.”

“Bullshit,” Billy sneered, eyebrows drawn together like storm clouds. He gestured wildly in the direction of Steve’s bedroom down the hallway. “You got another cup here?”

“Of course I fucking don’t,” Steve scowled back.

They stood there staring each other down for about a minute, unyieldingly standoffish and mutually unsure of what to say next; Billy’s hands tightly balled up against his chest, and Steve picking at the pocket lining of his sweatpants. He couldn’t tell what Billy was thinking, but he wished he could when some grandiose idea visibly crossed his mind; it was only evident from the miraculous way that Billy’s expression suddenly did a one-eighty: his dark eyebrows parted and his mouth popped open enough to show a sliver of teeth, and even his crossed arms and fists relaxed to hang loosely at his sides, flexing his fingers intermittently. He hadn’t ceased looking at Steve, but his unblinking, unrepentant glare had turned inquisitive, and, instead of that putting him at ease, Steve precipitously felt like he was being X-rayed.

“Hear me out,” Billy began, voice unnaturally calm in general, not just in comparison to how he’d blown in here like a personified Tasmanian devil.

Just the sound of it made Steve’s stomach flip with nerves. “What?” He asked uneasily, already inwardly cringing.

Billy took a tentative half step towards him; they weren’t touching, not even close, but Billy might’ve as well have entered Steve’s private space and grabbed him by the arms. Steve wanted to move back on impulse, but that would mean boxing himself into a corner, which was highly undesirable with that almost predatory look on Billy’s face.

“Fuck the cup,” Billy said slowly, carefully, and Steve stopped breathing. The next words came out muffled, because his ears had inexplicably started ringing. “We do it once, the old-fashioned way. If—for some reason—it doesn’t work, be my guest and give up.”

Steve did move away now, intent on getting as much distance between Billy and himself as physically possible without running out of his own damn apartment. He stopped by the very side of the couch and clamped a hand on the upholstery, certain that it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the Earth right now. “What the fuck.” He’d gone numb, and the words fell out of his open mouth. “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”

Billy had the gall to look unaffected, and Steve felt of flash of hatred for him because of it. “Listen, I don’t care if you don’t.” Then, he snorted, but it wasn’t even remotely humorous. “This isn’t my first time having meaningless sex, and I’m guessing you’re not a virgin.”

Steve was still so shocked that he was having trouble remembering to take regular breaths, but that at least snapped him halfway out of his trance. “Do you know how many girls I had sex with _before_ Nancy?” He bit out, not intending to turn this into some sort of dick-measuring contest, but just greatly needing to clear the air. “How many girls and guys _after_? No, I’m not a damn virgin.”

Despite a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it twitch in the right-hand corner of his full mouth, Billy otherwise showed no reaction. “Right, well, you know this is a good idea. You’re just too chickenshit to ask for it.”

Steve barked out a laugh, acutely wishing that he’d just left his door locked after all. If he’d known then what was happening now, Billy could’ve shouted until the cows came home or the neighbors called the cops, but Steve wouldn’t have opened it for anything. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he shook his head violently, just to get his point across. “I _don’t_ think either of those things.”

Billy nodded once, tightly, and fixed Steve with a look that both spoke volumes and nothing at all. “Even if it meant you getting a kid out of it?”

 _Fuck_ , that was a low blow. Specifically appealing to his barely licked wounds shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, and Steve despised himself for his weakness; he’d given up, that was true, but it didn’t make the loss of hope or keen sense of disappointment any less biting. When all was said and done, god, he still desperately wanted to start a family of his own—he just never thought that it’d take going this far.

Then again, he didn’t realize he’d have trouble conceiving, either, so these past few weeks had been chock-full of surprises.

He wasn’t going to agree that easily, but the idea was bouncing around in his head like a game of Pong, and even he knew that it was just a matter of time before he traitorously gave in. But, until then, he at least wanted to say that he’d put up some sort of a fight. “What happens after?” His voice shook, so he cleared it, but to no avail. “Are we just supposed to avoid each other for the rest of the time you’re here?”

Billy considered that, slitting his eyes. “Yeah, if that’s what you want. Again, I don’t know how many hookups you’ve had, but I’m not going to fall in love with you tonight, Harrington.” He said it so casually, so offhandedly, that Steve’s vision danced.

“What—what if it doesn’t work?”

Billy tipped his head back but kept his half-closed eyes trained on Steve, those absurdly long eyelashes grazing at the thin skin above his cheeks. “It’ll work,” he affirmed, more self-assured than Steve had ever seen him. “A cup of jizz can’t compare to my fucking _cock_.”

 _I’ve finally lost my fucking mind_ , Steve thought dreamily. _God, if you’re up there, please kill me instantly. Thank you in advance. Sincerely yours, Steven._

Instead, aloud, he mumbled, “What kind of fucking lunatic would I be to agree?”

“Depends,” Billy shrugged, arms crossed again and looking like the very essence of cool; Steve wanted to throttle him more than ever. “How badly do you want to be a dad?”

_Any time you’re ready, God, what are you waiting for?_

Steve pinched at the bridge of his nose so hard that he was pushing his luck for a nosebleed. “Fuck!” He swore loudly, completely uncaring if the neighbors heard. “Oh god, _fuck_.” Keeping his eyes downcast, he avoided Billy’s reaction when he waved a shaking hand in the direction of his feet. “…Take your shoes off.”

To his credit, Billy played it straight and didn’t make a single sound of celebration, but, if Steve could hedge a guess just through the tone of his voice, he was lightly smirking. “I know, I remember.” He bent down to start untying the black laces of his boots, and Steve sagged against the side edge of the couch, which had quickly become his last lifeline in this world.

“I must be fucking insane,” he spoke to the carpet, choking around his heart in his throat. “What the fuck.”

Billy did make a sound now, a cross between a snort and a dry chuckle, but he played it off as a cough. He kicked his boots in the direction of the foyer, and, now with only black socks on, he breathed out through the gap of his lips and inquisitively tilted his head.

Steve, feeling rather than seeing that burning gaze, subsequently didn’t wait for him to say anything else; he pushed off the back of the couch and stepped around Billy like the roadblock he was, not needing to look back to know that he was already hot on his heels. Without the clunky, heavy boots, he moved silently, and Steve wasn’t used to not hearing him come or go on the hardwood.

By the time that they both entered his bedroom, he was close to having an honest-to-god panic attack, and all he could do was take one stuttering breath after another. He walked over to the windows to draw the shades—it was pitch black out, with no moon in sight, but some nearby streetlights cast a diffused, incandescent glow, and the last thing that he wanted was to make this seem somehow _romantic_ —and then moved over to the nightstand to open the bottom drawer where he kept his sexual paraphernalia. He’d been busier than ever in the last year and hadn’t had time to properly utilize its contents, but he still kept it refreshed on a semi-regular basis; because, just like the backup flashlight and fresh pack of batteries he kept in the glove box of his Beemer, there was no such thing as being too prepared.

He started to dig past the lubricant and toys for a condom or two, but then he realized that, for the very first time since he’d become sexually active, he didn’t need protection, and he had to stop himself from instinctively taking anything from the neatly organized tray. So, he leaned away, even though it was unbelievably strange to close the drawer empty-handed, and turned around on his heels to face the room. Billy was standing by the end of the bed frame, hands on his hips and watching Steve’s every move. Even in the dim lighting, his bright blue eyes gleamed with some unspoken observation.

Steve cracked his knuckles just to give him something to do with his hands. “Some ground rules,” he began, not whispering, but not speaking at full volume, either. The quiet darkness of his bedroom was making the reality of the situation set in, and he didn’t think he could talk any louder if he wanted to. “We’re keeping this as… _clinical_ as possible.”

“Sure, whatever.”

Steve held up a hand and counted off each stipulation with the addition of another finger. “That means no talking, kissing, or unnecessary touching.”

Billy couldn’t hide his eye roll. “Okay.”

“And—” Without thinking, Steve nearly said, _don’t cum in me_ , but he caught himself in the nick of time. Not only would that be a contradiction, it would’ve defeated the purpose of the entire sordid affair. “—don’t take all your clothes off.”

Billy was already unbuckling his belt and unsnapping the button of his jeans. “Just shut up and get on the bed,” he huffed.

That sounded very serious, felt even more so, but he couldn’t quite suppress the tiny voice in the back of his head that found the command a tiny bit sexy. He wasn’t blind: he knew very well just how attractive Billy was and always had been, but he’d never entertained this being a real possibility, not even once, not even in his most shameful and wildest wet dreams, and he’d had a few back in the day. “Fuck,” he mumbled for the millionth time that night, although more to psych himself up than for Billy’s sake. “Alright.”

He unlaced the tie at his waist and tugged his loose sweatpants off, left them in a pile on the floor, and then sat on the edge of his bed; he wasn’t going to remove his shirt or socks, and he was leaving his boxers on until the very last second. With his back to Billy, he didn’t know how far he was undressing, and, although he didn’t want to watch, he couldn’t help seeing movement out of the corner of his eye. When he felt the other side of the bed dip from added weight, he was completely hesitant to turn his head.

“Lie back.”

Steve’s breath caught in his chest, but he did as he was told; he swung his legs over the side of the bed and settled back against his pillows, eyes locked on the shadowed ceiling and pointedly not at the base of his feet. But then Billy was on his knees, pressing them against his left thigh, and hovering over Steve’s supine form, and he had nowhere else to look but up at Billy’s face. He was enormously relieved to see that he still had all his clothing on, just with the exception of his belt removed and his jeans open and unzipped. “You ready?”

“No,” Steve said truthfully, because he would take no pleasure in snarking about it. “So talk me through whatever you’re about to do.”

Billy quirked an eyebrow, the skin of his inner forearm brushing ever so slightly against Steve’s bicep. “Wasn’t ‘no talking’ just one of your arbitrary rules?”

“No talking _dirty_.”

“Fine by me,” Billy shrugged. Pressing into the duvet, he placed both of his flattened palms on either side of Steve’s neck and shoulders, then shifted his knees so that both of Steve’s legs were between his own. “I’m going to push your underwear down.”

“I’ve got it,” Steve said hurriedly, snaking his hands between his legs and toying with the thin fabric still there. He hadn’t pulled the bed down before they’d gotten on it, and, without a sheet or blanket to lie under for modesty, he was at the very least infinitely glad for the shrouding darkness. Mirroring him, Billy sat up for a moment to lay a hand on his own waistband, where he definitely wasn’t flaccid, and Steve’s eyes stayed glued there as he bit the bullet and stripped down, discarding his boxers on top of his sweatpants on the floor. He automatically replaced his hand to his dick and gave it a few half-hearted and wholly unnecessary squeezes, because this completely, totally bizarre situation still couldn’t diminish his heat-enhanced sex drive—quite the contrary. Even without proper foreplay, he was already ridiculously wet and ready, and he kept his legs tightly shut so as not to make his arousal immediately obvious. Steve wasn’t ashamed of his body or its particular differences from Billy’s, but he avoided making direct eye contact all the same.

In contrast, Billy’s own eyes were transfixed on Steve’s slow-moving fist, and then he was sliding a hand into his underwear to release his stiffened cock from its restraints. Although they’d shared countless communal gym class showers together, Steve stared as if it were the first time all over again; considering how much Billy had changed since then, in a way, it was. But what hadn’t changed was how Billy—from being an alpha or simply being blessed, realistically both—was just as stupidly well-endowed as Steve not-so-vaguely remembered, and, while it’d been difficult to look away from as a teenager, it was fucking impossible when it was merely inches from his face. On top of it all, he was already almost as hard as Steve was, but he wrapped a hand around himself nonetheless; where Steve had been gentle with himself, Billy was violent, and it was a truly brain-melting sight to watch Billy vigorously yet efficiently jerk himself to a full-blown erection like the salt-of-the-earth, red-blooded American man that he was.

“Okay,” Billy eventually panted, broad chest heaving under his shirt as if he’d run a lap or twenty. Slowing his steady strokes, he again went to move over Steve and prop himself up by one arm pushed into the bed, but, unlike before, he stopped to set a hot, _so hot_ hand on Steve’s upper thigh, making him jolt like a live wire at the unexpected touch. “I’m going in.”

“Yeah,” was Steve’s curt reply. In the recesses of his mind, he was surprised that he could still formulate coherent words at this point. He’d been steadily losing his already-lax composure with each ticking second, and, if he focused hard enough, he could see Billy’s entire body trembling, too. But then Billy was leaning back over him, his free hand even closer to Steve’s neck than before, making Steve grip so hard at himself in anticipation that it actually hurt. With that, there was nothing else to do but to take a deep breath and open his legs, because this was happening, and, holy _fuck_ , this was _happening_. And the most fucked part of all—no pun intended—was that, earlier, Billy had been unequivocally right: Steve had been too chickenshit to ask for this, even though any hesitation that he’d incurred then had been completely bypassed by now. He didn’t know how much of his lust came from his uncontrollable hormones or his actual feelings, but neither the answer nor the exact ratio mattered—all he knew was that he wanted this, god help him, but he desperately did. He just hadn’t known it until feeling Billy’s evanescent touch, until his deliciously rough jeans were rubbing up against the prickled skin of his legs, until they were seconds away from creating even more friction from within.

Billy moved his hand from his hardened cock to hover his fingers above the apex of Steve’s thighs. He tortuously paused again, this time to look at Steve squarely in the eyes; both sets of pupils were blown out, and the shadows made their irises look solidly, unfathomably black. “Can—”

“Just touch me,” Steve snapped, sick of talking instead of doing, sick of being splayed out, sick of shaking from a long-unfilled need. He grabbed Billy’s large, rough hand and used it to palm the entirety of himself, from his smaller dick to the slick entrance beneath the base. Neither could tamper their sharp, strangled intakes of breath: Steve from the touch, Billy from the feel. He took his hand off Billy’s and used it to grab and pinch unforgivingly at the supple skin of his own inner thigh, because there was no way that he was going to go as far as reaching out and doing the same to Billy, even though the deep longing he felt made his fingers twitch.

Billy’s fingers were red-hot and selectively calloused, and he kept them motionlessly pressed against Steve’s flesh for a few seconds. That alone felt fucking amazing, but then he moved them just a fraction, and the active contact to his heightened nerves made him want to explode into an inestimable number of shards. Steve’s breaths came out in broken stutters as Billy’s feather-light touch explored the height and width of the soaked slit that he found there, and, when he pulled his hand away, there wasn’t even time to feel aching disappointment, because he replaced his grazing fingers with the precum-wettened head of his cock just as quickly.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve hissed in equal parts satisfaction and impatience, throwing his hands up to fist them in the front of Billy’s shirt, intent on wrinkling it or maybe even ripping it to shreds. For now, he used it to yank Billy closer, until Billy’s arms were flat on the bed and his face was an inch away from the crook of Steve’s milky-white neck. With their bodies now pressed flush against each other, and Billy having yet to actually enter Steve while breathing on his skin in hot, humid puffs, it was the epitome of sublime torture. Vibrating like a wind-up toy and heart beating fast enough to nearly burst out of his ribcage, Steve was seconds away from begging, but, all of a sudden, he didn’t need to. Billy seemed to come to his senses—or, at least, to his limits—and he moved a hand down to the base of his cock to push slowly but confidently into Steve’s wetness; he stopped at the tip for the time being, presumably until he could gauge Steve’s reaction, because there was surely no physical resistance to be found.

Whatever emotion Billy found on his open face must’ve been sufficient, because, in the next second, he was sliding home and burying himself to the hilt, all while death-gripping Steve’s bony hips hard enough that he was sure to have deplorably angry bruising by daybreak. Unable to think straight, Steve’s hands moved of their own volition from the front of Billy’s shirt to the collar and, then, to his exposed throat. Scrabbling for purchase at the thick skin that he found there, Steve eventually settled on digging his blunt nails into the junction of Billy’s neck and shoulders, brushing against the delicate chain of the mysterious necklace hanging there, and feeling the muscles and sinew twitch and strain under the pads of his own fingers. He didn’t draw blood, but it wasn’t without lack of trying—if his nails were a millimeter longer, he would have.

He waited for Billy to start picking up the pace, for he’d yet to do anything but remain stationary. For all he knew, Billy was intent on just staying inside him until they both eventually reached their unhurried climaxes, but he couldn’t think of a more abhorrent possibility; if he wouldn’t thrust, then Steve would have to do it for him. He shifted his legs around Billy’s hips and groaned at the enormous fullness inside, pushing his very limits so that the burning pleasure was on the borderline of indescribable pain. It was a sensation that he simultaneously had too much and not nearly enough of, and he gave himself over to the two extremes without abandon as he writhed on the bed. Billy seemed to get the hint quickly, for, without warning, he thrust hard enough into Steve that it caused a steady stream of swear words to bubble past his lips in a sinner’s prayer. This wasn’t the first dick that he’d ever taken in his life, wouldn’t be the last, but it had to be the biggest, and Steve honest-to-god felt like dying from the sheer ecstasy of Billy being buried deep inside him while not holding a shred of himself back.

“Again,” he managed, not caring if he sounded pitiful or pleading or wanting; from the look of Billy’s half-lidded eyes and deeply creased brow, he was in no mood to judge. Little blond flyaways were plastered to his sweaty forehead, and Steve was almost bowled over with the sudden urge to push them back and run his hands through the rest of Billy’s cropped hair. He didn’t miss the scraggly, over-hairsprayed mullet that’d once personally contributed to a great deal of ozone depletion, but, for a split second, he wished that Billy still had it; there was no doubt in his mind that he would’ve been pulling, _yanking_ on it by now.

But that desire fell to the wayside, because Billy was making a point of fucking all thoughts right out of his head. Just as he’d requested, _again_ he got and _again_ he took, _over_ and _over_ and _over_ , until they both had to stop to catch their shallow breaths before one of them had an aneurysm. He could tell from Billy’s noises that he was critically close, and his own building pressure from within held him captive, his stomach muscles going agonizingly taut and his toes curling. He stared up at Billy’s nonsensically beautiful face, as if it were the only sight left in the whole world, and watched it contort into a pained grimace before his very eyes.

“I’m gonna.” The words fell between harsh, heavy breaths, and it didn’t even matter that he didn’t intend on finishing his sentence. Against the pillows, Steve nodded furiously, digging his nails in even harder and more than ready for the unforgiving give of Billy’s upcoming climax. He clenched every muscle around him for good measure, both inside and out, and that was the final straw: against the planes of Steve’s torso, Billy’s stomach went as hard as a rock, and he came with a low whine, his powerful grasp on Steve’s hips now spreading out to engulf the entirety of his pelvic area like he owned it. And that throbbing, hard cock of ridiculous proportions scraped every last raw nerve in the process, making Steve hiss like a snake as they rode it out together.

Seconds after Billy’s release exploded from within, Steve’s eyes shuttered and his head tipped upwards, his crown hitting the headboard. With Billy’s racing heart and heaving chest atop of his own, he managed to hold off for only a handful of gasps before his own culmination followed, and then he was spilling over himself and Billy in an unrepentant catharsis. Immediately following their respective orgasms, they remained frozen in place until Billy’s enormous erection could fully ebb away; Billy’s hands still locked onto Steve’s lower stomach and his thumbs digging into the now-tender flesh of his hipbones, and Steve now practically strangling Billy. Coming down from his high and regaining his awareness of his surroundings made him guiltily realize just how tightly he’d been holding on, and he immediately lessened his grip. Fortunately, Billy didn’t even seem to notice, for he had his eyes still closed and his head hanging just above Steve’s shoulder.

An unspecified handful of minutes later, Billy finally lifted his neck and rolled it side-to-side. “Shit,” he mumbled, voice deep and rough and sending low vibrations directly into Steve’s ear. Already reduced to oversensitive jelly from Billy’s cock, which was shrinking but still very much buried deep and firm inside him, it sent a fresh wave of tingles down his spine. “Not bad, Harrington.”

Steve just nodded mutely, unsure of what he could say that wouldn’t result in him beating himself up over later. He’d never been good with postcoital talk, and that was with actual lovers; _this_ was a one-time romp with some ghost from his past just so he could try for a baby. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t exactly have a frame of reference. When he could will his body to follow his mental direction, he glanced at his bedside alarm clock from the corner of his eye, and he wasn’t surprised to find that it was now well past ten. He knew enough proper etiquette when it came to regular guests and extending them an option to stay overnight, but what about the oddball ones that he just had semi-casual sex with? Would it be weird to offer him his guest room? Would it be too much to offhandedly suggest he could sleep here with him?

Billy shifting above—and _in_ —him made his attention snap back to reality; by now, they both could tell that his erection had softened enough. With a groan, Billy carefully pulled out with a disgusting ( _erotic?_ ) wet squelching sound and pushed off his still form. Steve expected him to then get up off the bed, but he just rolled over to the left-hand side and tucked himself back into his underwear, not bothering to clean off his share of the mess that they’d made. And then he rested there, brushing hair off his forehead and exhaling loudly through his nose, breath occasionally hitching in his throat. Now freed of Billy’s weight, cool air hit every inch of Steve’s on-fire lower half and made him acutely aware of his stark nakedness. He leaned a hand over the edge of the bed to snatch up his discarded clothing, taking care not to move too vigorously so nothing would drip out from between his legs; he had to raise his hips a little so he could shrug his underwear and sweatpants back on, and that familiar motion spurred an idea.

He rotated around on the bed and shifted his hips up onto the pillow that his head had just been on, laying his legs against the wood headboard and hooking his heels onto the edge to pull himself up a little higher. Billy’s face noticeably tilted to the right, his thick brow creasing again as he watched intently.

“What the hell you doin’?” He languidly asked, settling an arm behind his neck and blinking up at Steve’s airborne feet.

“I’ve got to chill out upside down.” Steve gestured up and down at himself as if it were self-explanatory, and, in a way, it kind of was. “Y’know, gravity.”

“Seriously?” Billy snorted, his free hand going to rest on the flat stretch of his abdomen. There was an uncovered stretch of white skin just below the hemline, and it was a stark contrast against the charcoal-colored fabric of his shirt. “How long?”

Steve checked the clock again and set a mental timer, then folded his arms and got comfortable by settling in a little more. “Half an hour, give or take.”

“Seems excessive.”

He shrugged, although it came out stilted with his shoulders up against the bed and an unaccustomed sense of gravity bearing down on him. “You’re not wrong. It’s not the first time, though. I’m kinda used to it.”

Billy’s hand ran over his torso to tug his top down, but he stopped to pluck at the center of it, tenting it above his chest. “You did a number on my shirt,” he remarked, referring to the deep-set wrinkles, stretched-out collar, and the dark splotch of Steve’s release on the lower center half.

“Yeah, sorry about that.” It was merely the polite thing to say, because he really wasn’t. _What was that old saying? Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs?_

It was Billy’s turn to make a dismissive gesture, and he chose to let go of the ruined fabric and wave a hand. “Whatever, it’ll wash.”

They lapsed into an almost placid silence, content to fully even their breathing out and bask in the aftermath of their unexpected coitus in favor of filling it with mindless chatter. Even before any of this, Steve had been worn-out from his ongoing heat—he hadn’t slept during the day, and, initially, he’d regretted it—but, for some reason, he was now finding it easy to keep his eyes open. He reasoned it was mainly because of his odd posture, but he wondered if it had something to do with the very keen sense of his old-enemy-turned-hopeful-sperm-donor next to him. On the contrary, Billy was so quiet and motionless that, if he didn’t have his eyes open as he stared at the ceiling, Steve would’ve assumed that he was fast asleep.

As if on cue, Billy blinked and flickered his eyes over when he felt Steve’s gaze on the side of his face. “It’s late.”

“So?” Steve said, shifting his backside a little because his tailbone had started to go numb. Fifteen minutes down, fifteen to go. “I’m not going to kick you out, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Good to know,” he said dryly. “But I gotta get home, get a shower. Got stuff I need to do early in the morning.” He didn’t go into detail as to what that pertained, and Steve didn’t bother to ask.

“Okay, yeah.” He wondered if he should thank him for this, but he instantly knew that that’d be going too far; Billy surely had to know just how grateful he was, and the least he could do was leave it unspoken. He’d prefer it, anyways. “Understood.”

Billy sat up on his side of the bed and threw his socked feet to the carpet, standing and stretching his legs out with a small _pop_. He leaned over the edge of the footboard and produced his belt, and Steve horizontally watched him button and zip himself back up and then rethread the leather strip through his jean belt loops.

As he hooked the buckle together, he cleared his throat. “You goin’ to the party next week?”

Shit, that was right—a week from this Monday was Labor Day, and, this year, Hopper and Joyce’s annual get-together was the Sunday before. He’d even written it on the planner in his (admittedly messy) briefcase and on the calendar on the side of the refrigerator, but the weeks had a proclivity to blur together with his currently hectic schedule.

“Of course,” he affirmed, only now starting to feel silly for hanging upside down amid such a casual discussion. There were only ten minutes to go, but he was restless and getting impatient. “You still going?” He remembered Hopper unashamedly accosting Billy about it on the Fourth, and, although he’d agreed then, Steve didn’t know if he’d since weaseled out of it.

“Yeah, have to,” Billy grumbled, but he didn’t sound too upset by the prospect. “Jim would break into my place and hogtie me if I didn’t, probably on Joyce’s orders. Max would supply the rope, or, realistically, just do her fucking best to annoy me into going.”

Steve laughed lowly, because, hyperbole aside, neither possibility was that far from the truth. “It can get annoying, sometimes, but at least they care.”

He shook his head. “ _Mm_ , ‘sometimes’ is an understatement.” With the state of his jeans back in order, he set his hands on his belted hips. “So, I’ll see you then.”

Why did Steve get the feeling that Billy was trying to ask something without actually saying it? “At the very least,” Steve bobbed his head against the bed, sort of like a nod if you squinted. “Unless you want to hang out again before then. But I’m going to Seattle for most of next week, so it’d have to be sometime before or after.”

Billy craned his head in concession, but a look flashed on his face that, especially in the low lighting, didn’t allow Steve time to decipher it properly. “Are you—never mind,” he finished, huffing out an almost angry breath, as if the words had left his mouth of their own accord.

With seven minutes remaining, Steve had had enough of his impromptu yoga session. If enough semen hadn’t made its way deep into his cervix by now, no minuscule amount of time was going to change that. “What?” He asked earnestly, dropping his legs down and sitting up slowly so as not to make all the blood rush to his head at once. “Go ahead.”

“Just that…” Billy began, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Are you even going to let me know if this worked?”

Steve wrapped an arm around his knees, biting his lip at the pervading yet pleasant soreness at his core and the constant throbbing of his hips where Billy had squeezed him like an anaconda. In the darkness, he couldn’t see his own handiwork on Billy’s neck and shoulders, but he just knew, without a doubt, that it also had to be aching. “Would you want that?” He asked quietly, cautiously, fingering the soft cotton pants covering his shins.

Billy was a stone statue. “I don’t know,” he whispered, words carried out on a hushed breath.

Resolute, Steve nodded, but a lump had formed in his throat for some reason. “Then why even ask? Seems to me blissful ignorance would make it easier, especially when you leave.”

Billy was vehemently shaking his head before he’d even finished talking. “Not knowing would only make things harder.”

Steve stared at him for a solid minute. They’d already discussed the possibility of sending letters and staying in very impersonal contact throughout the years, but to indirectly hear that Billy was still on the fence about his part in all of this was just mind-boggling, considering that he’d also personally offered to have sex with Steve tonight so he could have one last good try at conceiving. The mixed signals were giving Steve whiplash; as much as he wanted to, he just didn’t have the mental stamina to hash it out any further.

“Then I’ll tell you,” he confirmed, steadfastly watching Billy for any subtle new reaction, but he didn’t get one. “I promise.”

Billy’s tone was as guarded as his rigid pose. “Okay.” He backed out of Steve’s room and stopped at the edge of his door, never breaking eye contact with Steve, not even once. It was almost chilling, the way that he felt locked to that pair of ice-blue eyes.

“I don’t think I have to ask you not to share tonight’s events with my sister,” he suddenly said, hand on the doorframe. “Definitely not with that little fuzzball with the missing teeth.”

Steve covered his mouth with his hand to conceal his grin. In his head, he could hear Dustin’s offended splutter so clearly that it was as if he were here in this room and not in Chicago—which, considering what’d transpired, it was a damn good thing that he wasn’t. “He’s not coming next week, but don’t worry. I definitely won’t.”

“Good,” Billy nodded stiffly, and he left as dramatically as he’d entered the place. A minute or so later, there was a faint sound of boots on the hardwood and the front door being pulled open and shut, and that was that.

And then Steve was alone with his thoughts—which ranged from _what the fuck just happened_ to _what the fuck did we just do_ —in the too-loud, too-empty silence that Billy had left behind. He was too worked up to try to sleep, mostly mentally and emotionally, but that also included physically; heats were funny like that, already making him unashamedly horny so soon after some of the best sex he’d had in literal years. As much as his body wanted him to, there was no point in touching himself, because nothing he could do now would even remotely compare. Suddenly too restless to stay here and pore over each and every detail, he slid off the bed and turned around to smooth out the wrinkles in the duvet. Between that bending motion and walking across the bedroom, it made him realize just how sore that he already was, and he was loath to imagine how much more pronounced it would be come morning. It wasn’t anything that he couldn’t already handle, but that particularly throbbing ache flustered him all the same.

He started towards the kitchen in pursuit of some water and an ibuprofen, then maybe to the living room for his earlier discarded novel, but something compelled him to stop halfway in the hallway, right in front of his guest room. He kept the door closed whenever he didn’t have someone over—which, granted, was often the case—and also because he’d recently started using it as basic storage, but, pushing it open now, he swallowed heavily and glanced around at the white walls with a new pair of eyes.

It was smaller and barer than his own already-minimal room, but that didn’t matter; he had yet to start seriously considering redecorating or moving or anything of that nature, because that was putting the horse well before the cart. As it stood, he was happy enough here and, like he’d told Hopper back in July, didn’t mind the daily commute to Fort Wayne if it meant being in his familiar hometown where he was surrounded by a few close friends that’d also decided to stick around. But he wasn’t stuck on Hawkins forever, and he saw himself moving away at some point, but he’d always assumed that would be for the benefit of the job—certainly not because of his personal life. Nonetheless, wherever he was going didn’t matter nearly as much when he considered what he already had, and what he looked at now could very possibly be recategorized as a nursery in less than a year’s time. The thought hadn’t hit him like this before tonight, but, to be fair, he’d never had sex with Billy before tonight, either. It was a night of firsts all around.

Walking up to the shuttered blinds and raising them to look out at the clear night sky, replete with the glint and glitter of faraway stars and celestial bodies, he crossed his arms and intoned a little internal prayer to whatever higher power that currently could be bothered to hear him out. He knew that he was playing a dangerous game here, getting ahead of himself by thinking about nurseries and maybe even moving to accommodate a different life with a kid; really, the more that he got his hopes up now, the more that it would hurt whenever those monthly symptoms kicked in again. Yet, no matter how hard he tried to be realistic about his chances and his next inevitable failure, there was a bubble somewhere in his chest that he just couldn’t quash no matter how hard he tried. It’d been there in June and July and, now, at the end of August, it was somehow still hanging on, shimmering and enduring, and he prayed that it would stick around for just a little bit longer.

Turning on his heel, he headed out of the room, but he didn’t close the door behind him this time.


	9. Chapter 9

_September 3, 1995_

Billy didn’t get nervous easily. A large part of his career revolved around him staying calm, cool, and collected in the face of certain danger, and, even during the more mundane aspects, keeping a clear head. There were still plenty of opportunities in his life to snap from anger or fear or both, but the worst cases had happened few and far between in recent years; some hundred rounds of therapy and getting shot had reset a few of his crossed wires, or so he’d been told.

And that was why he was so annoyed with himself for suddenly not having the balls to get out of his truck, currently stalled on Hopper and Joyce’s front lawn, and go to their _party_ , of all things. The location didn’t faze him—it’d ceased to be unfamiliar a few months ago—nor did the hosts, because he’d spent enough time with Hopper at work and with his family off-duty to feel comfortable in their combined company. But the guests did, and he kept eyeing the other cars parked all over the lawn, each unfamiliar one a harbinger for facing figures from his bitter past. Naturally, that didn’t make him eager to jump out of the truck and hurry inside.

Right as he was reaching into his glove compartment for a very necessary cigarette, a sudden furious knocking on the driver seat window made him jump in his seat and whip his head around so fast that his neck cracked. At the sight of the perpetrator, he scowled and rolled the window down, social anxiety temporarily blown to hell in favor of a very familiar sense of familial annoyance.

“Maxine,” he growled, rubbing at his brow with no small amount of roughness. “Don’t fucking do that.”

Grinning cheekily and not even remotely sorry, Max crossed her arms and leaned them on the edge of the window. She had a pair of wire-framed sunglasses on and her short hair scraped back into a teeny-tiny ponytail at the nape of her neck; a splotch of crimson against the vividly bright and blue sky and green grass. “License and registration, sir.”

“Ha-ha,” Billy enunciated sarcastically, getting the tremors out of his fingers by squeezing the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. He had his own sunglasses tucked into his button-down for the time being. “Real funny, dipshit.”

“You coming out today, or did I just misread the memo?” She waved a pale hand at the truck’s interior, wafting in a faint smell of sunscreen. “I didn’t know the get-together was supposed to be held in here.”

As she quietly snickered at her own joke, Billy tilted his head back against the headrest of his seat. “I got a better idea,” he said, hands still on the wheel and eyeing the keys still in the ignition. “Get in. We can drive off, Bonnie and Clyde-style, never to return.”

“Ew, bad example. They were lovers.” She wrinkled her nose, pushing into the car a little bit to pinch lightly at the tanned skin of his forearm. “Anyways, so not happening. Everyone already knows you’re here.”

She pointed up at the porch and waved at a shadowed figure that hadn’t been there before, and, squinting through the sunlight, Billy could just make out a thin silhouette from here.

“Great,” he grumbled as he turned the car off and took the keys out, gripping them tightly in his palm. He pushed Max’s arms off the side of the car and waited for her to take the hint, and she darted out of the door’s trajectory a mere second later. As soon as he’d somewhat leaped down from the elevated height, slamming the door shut in the process, his fingers automatically scrabbled for his sunglasses in the bright, unforgiving summer sunshine. Max moved to stand next to his side; with her pink polka dot halter-top and light capris and with his very, very loosely fastened white button-up and knee-ripped jeans, they looked decidedly summery together.

They moved towards the entrance, Max leading the way and Billy trailing behind. Once they got a little closer, he held up a hand in greeting at the figure, who was none other than Joyce.

“Hi, honey,” she greeted, taking a light but comforting hold of Billy’s forearms once he’d finally clomped up the stairs. He’d forgone his heavy work boots in favor of a pair of brogues, but, apparently, either didn’t make much of a difference in way of sound. Joyce had on a short-sleeved white shirt and tan cargo shorts, and Billy noticed that she’d gotten a tan in the week that he’d last seen her; for how naturally pale and frail that she was, the lively flush of color suited her well. “We’re so happy you’re here.”

“Thanks for having me,” he managed, feeling awkward from her praise, but Joyce just beamed at him. Max, standing off to the side, watched the interaction with her hands on her hips and a small smile of her own. Billy looked around the porch and pointedly avoided the windows, not wanting confirmation of people inside perhaps staring back at him.

“Come in whenever you’re ready,” Joyce told him, all-knowingly, squeezing his wrists just once before letting go. Billy merely nodded at her, grateful as always for her hospitality, as well as stunned by her supernatural ability to simply understand without asking questions. “Max, when you have a chance, could you bring in a few cases of pop and beer from the garage? Jim just set up the cooler outside.”

“Sure thing,” Max replied, giving her a thumbs-up. Joyce smiled at her, and she threw Billy one more kind-hearted look before re-entering the house.

Now alone again, Max turned to him, eyeing the tense line between his eyebrows and the way that his mouth was set. “If it makes you feel better, there’s plenty of food and booze. _And_ we’re only expecting twenty people, you and me included, and not everyone’s here yet. So, don’t worry, there’s not going to be a lot of gawking going on.”

He breathed out as he looked over the sea of cars. Twenty was a hard, quantifiable number to hear, and it was difficult to imagine even more people still coming. Then again, Hopper was a well-known character around town, and it was perfectly like him to have accumulated double-digit friends and extended family, much to Billy’s chagrin.

“Also, if you think about it, you already know most of us,” she continued, moving to go down the stairs and stopping at the top step.

Billy just looked at her blankly. “Yeah, that’s the problem.”

Realization creased her face, for she’d obviously forgotten how some of the others still perceived Billy; but she got over it easily, because then she gave a very wolfish grin. Billy could only look wearily on.

“Steve’s here,” she hummed, just a little too innocent to be construed as uplifting.

Again, he glanced over the cars to search for Steve’s BMW, and, within seconds, he found it parked under the big oak tree off the side of the road. A feeling of some kind bloomed into his chest; if it were relief or nerves, he didn’t know and didn’t want to. Very evenly, he rumbled, “ _Mm._ ”

“So—”

_Absolutely not. Not here, not now, maybe not ever again._

“I’m gonna stop you right there.” He held up a hand and stalked past her, taking two steps down the stairs until he was standing on the gravel driveway and looking up at the spot that he’d just been. “Now, make yourself useful, and lead me to the drinks in the garage.”

From the way that she was still grinning, his assessment was wholly correct, but she thankfully didn’t press any further as she flew down the steps and hooked a finger in his direction. “Right this way.”

They traipsed on the crunchy gravel for a few seconds before coming up to the open garage, and their steps on the slab of concrete were scuffled but otherwise silent. Max flounced past him to move into the small clearance between the storage shelves and the front of Joyce’s 1989 Accord, where there were several cardboard carriers stacked and waiting to be carted off to the backyard. She foisted up a pack of Sprite and a case of Corona and used her head to point in the direction of a larger pack of bottled water set off to the side. “Can you get that and head in? I’ll come back and get some Coke in a minute.”

“I’ll wait for you,” he said, stepping out of the way so that Max could move past him. She gave him a look as she passed, but, again, she didn’t say anything. He moved in to easily lift the pack and bring it out to the edge of the garage, and, when he stood back up, he was surprised to see her back so soon.

“What?” She asked at the confused look on his face. “When I got back to the porch, Steve was already there and took them from me. I’m fast, but not that fast.”

Billy just shook his head, determined not to let that little tidbit visibly affect him. “Just get the Coke.”

She did, and they walked back to the porch with no other words shared. Billy braced himself for the sight of Steve leaning over the edge of the railing, waiting for them, but he breathed out an imperceptible sigh of relief when nobody was there. It wasn’t that he wanted to avoid Steve, but he hadn’t seen him since _that_ night last week, and the time apart had only worsened his anxiety over where they currently stood. Late-night casual encounters were one thing—once upon a time, they were his bread and butter—but the inevitable aftermath in the daylight was another story entirely, and it only ever went one of two ways.

“I’ve got the door,” she announced, going ahead of him even though it was obvious that he wasn’t struggling with the barely cumbersome pack of water. He shifted it under one arm just to prove a point, but she was already a step away from the screen and didn’t see it. But before she could reach out for the handle, the main door behind it carefully swung open.

When he looked up, Steve was in the doorway and holding the screen open so Max could step through. Their eyes met, brown meeting blue, and the split second that Billy had to take in the sight in front of him was somehow more than enough. Steve was in a faded Cubs t-shirt, cuffed denim shorts, and red Converse, with a pair of tortoiseshell Ray-Bans pushing his chestnut hair back off his soft, open face. He nodded once at Billy and gave him a flash of a quirked smile, and that served to loosen a knot of tension that Billy had unknowingly been carrying; he was bolstered by the fact that if Steve could play along today, then so could he.

Without preamble, he stepped past Steve, getting a trace of his familiar scent—a mixture of clean cologne and deodorant, now with the faintest trace of salt—in the process, and entered the cool, shadowed parlor of Hopper and Joyce’s house. He remembered what Hopper had told him the first time that he’d come over, about how they’d moved here five years ago after they’d both grown tired of their separate lives and respective childless abodes. It was a small home but cozy, a little ways out of town but with neighbors within walking distance, surrounded by trees but not a forest—after the traumatic incident of Will going missing in some desolate backwoods, that’d been Joyce’s only requirement, even though it wouldn’t matter much considering that he didn’t live with her in Hawkins anymore. Still, Hopper was only too happy to comply, because Jane hadn’t necessarily had a good experience with forests, either, and she still visited regularly.

Glancing around at the unoccupied furniture and the yellow walls adorned with a multitude of aged portraits, Billy couldn’t see any evidence of a party from here. As he made his way to the kitchen, he almost started wondering where everyone else was, but the answer subsequently came from the vibrant sound of chatter breezing in from the sliding glass door in the adjacent dining room. He would’ve covertly peeked outside to get a rough idea of the other guests, but, with Max and Steve presumably right behind him, he just set the water case on the laminate counter and reflexively opened a utensil drawer for scissors to slice the plastic open.

Max came up to his left and set the Coke next to the other packs that’d already been brought in. Billy glanced over his shoulder, expecting to find Steve lingering there and watching, but he wasn’t; with how small the house was, it made Billy briefly wonder how he’d missed Steve seemingly disappear into thin air, but he just shrugged and went back to the task at hand. Once he’d sliced open the other drink carriers, he automated the system by handing Max an armful of assorted cans so she could walk out to the deck, dump them in the freshly iced cooler, and walk back for more. They made quick work of it, and, just as soon as the last surplus of bottled water was in the main refrigerator, a Hawaiian-shirted Hopper walked through the door with a spatula in hand.

“Billy! Hey, nice to see ya!” Hopper grinned. He was shielding his eyes and squinting as though he were still outside, probably because he was adjusted to standing in sunny daylight and not a shaded household kitchen. “Grab a beer, some snacks, and join the fun. Food’s almost ready.”

“Alright,” Billy nodded, throwing Hopper the same tensely polite smile that he’d given Joyce. He didn’t have anything to do with his hands now, and he flexed them at his sides. “Cool, thanks.”

Max snaked a hand onto Billy’s tight bicep and lightly tugged him in the direction of the deck. “Come on, we’ve already got chairs set out.”

Accepting his fate, he kept his mouth shut as Max led him out of the house and back into the persistent heat, the full brunt of the burning sun again on his face. He hadn’t removed his sunglasses since initially putting them on, but he still needed to squint to look around at the staged backyard: there were about twenty mismatched polyester lawn chairs set in a big crooked oval off to the side of the deck, where an overhead maple next to the house cast a blessedly large shadow. The deck furniture had been moved off to the side in favor of accommodating three large white folding tables, and there was an assortment of finger foods on top of the plastic orange-and-blue-striped tablecloths that covered them. The grill was on the other side of the deck, away from where everyone was sitting, mainly because the smell of charcoal and sizzling beef was overpowering up close but rather pleasant from a distance; Billy definitely liked it, because, like freshly cut grass or the smell of rain on hot pavement, it was a quintessential summer aroma.

“Where do you want to sit?” Max asked, dropping her hand as they descended the short flight of deck stairs and came up on the oval of chairs with several people already sitting there. She’d picked up a warm Coke as she’d walked by, but Billy had just wrinkled his nose at the prospect of drinking a hot beer.

“Don’t care,” Billy said through gritted teeth, intensely feeling the other guests’ scrutinizing stares, for they’d all turned their heads to look at the newcomer. He was suddenly very glad for the safety blanket of his tinted sunglasses, because they let him ambiguously lock eyes on the lush grass in front of his feet.

But his curiosity ultimately won out, and he utilized that same cover to look around discreetly at he was dealing with here. First off, and with no small amount of relief, he noted Phil Callahan and Calvin Powell, both of whom he’d counted on coming purely so that he’d have co-workers to talk shop with. Joyce was directly across from where Billy was standing now, and there were two similar-looking boys on either side of her. He recognized Jonathan Byers from his unmistakably tiny eyes and grumpy expression, which meant the very pale boy with very short dark hair must’ve been Will; it was only from context and those old photos in the living room that he even knew about Joyce’s youngest son, because he sure as hell didn’t remember the other William. And, of course, sandwiched between Jonathan and the ever-petite Nancy Wheeler— _or Byers now, whatever_ —was Steve, sitting there and doing a piss-poor job of hiding his blatant ogling back. Next to Will was Wheeler’s gangly brother, and Jane, and then a couple of empty seats waiting to be filled, and that was it.

He was just gearing up to choose when a motion caught his eye, and he snorted at the sight of Jane giving a tiny wave and pointing at the handful of empty chairs on her left. He moved there automatically and took the offered spot next to her, and Max followed in line; she sat to the immediate right of Billy, smack dab in the center of the northernmost row, with four empty chairs on her left. As he settled into his seat, Billy counted the other ones, spread out intermittently, and came up with nine available, minus one reserved for Hopper over at the grill. He took the opportunity to nod at Callahan and Powell at the end of the opposite row, as well as briefly glance in Steve’s direction. He was six seats down and currently talking to Jonathan, but, with the chairs scrunched together as they were, Billy would have no problem talking to him from here if he so wished.

“So,” he began levelly, once he was comfortable in the precarious chair and had settled his ankle on his knee. Jane turned her head at the sound of his voice, just as he’d intended. “You got any more sparklers for tonight?”

“There goes the surprise,” she teased, smiling wanly. She had her hair plaited in two French braids, and it made her kind face look more girlish than it already was. “No, sorry. But dad’s going to start a fire so we can have s’mores later—does that count?”

He rubbed at the pronounced stubble on his chin. He’d taken to facial hair a few years back, because the result of chopping off his mullet had been a baby face that’d needed every last advantage that a beard could bring. When they’d started dating, Michael hadn’t liked the look of it, so he’d abandoned it for his sake; but, ever since their breakup last year, he’d re-committed to the role. It was stupidly petty, but, damn, did it feel good doing things just to spite bitter exes.

“It might be good enough,” he said, playing along and making Jane smile even more. He straightened up in his seat and set his hands on the armrests, fingers playing with the mesh cup holders. “We’ll see. Just when’d you get here?”

Furrowing her brow as she tried to recall, she looked at Wheeler for support, but he was too busy talking animatedly with Will. Billy had to admit, the kid looked much more grown-up and at ease with short, spiky hair instead of the unflattering bowl-cut that he’d had in those old photos.

Not wanting to interrupt them, she turned back to Billy and shrugged. “Twelve, maybe? Dad and Joyce needed help setting up the tables, putting out snacks, and getting the grill ready. And then we were on chair duty.”

At that, Billy eyed the frankly insane set-up again. “Real talk, where did you guys get _twenty_ damn chairs?”

“Some of these are mine and Mike’s, and Nancy and Jonathan brought their own,” she explained, holding up her fingers to count which of the chairs were Hopper and Joyce’s and which of them weren’t. “So that leaves about, what, fifteen? Fourteen? It sounds like a lot, but we do have lots of get-togethers here in the summer. They’re cheap at end-of-the-season sales, too.”

“Huh, good to know.” He leaned back a little to tip his eyes up to the clear blue sky. “Now, can anyone tell me, who else is coming?”

Max swallowed a hasty gulp of Coke and took this one. “Mike’s mom, dad, and sister should be here any moment. Lucas flew in from St. Louis and will be coming with his fiancée and family, too.”

He snapped his head back to look between them. “You’re kidding me,” he said flatly.

“Why?” Jane and Max said simultaneously, the former confused and the latter slightly suspicious.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “Just more people than I expected.” That was a bald-faced lie; he’d already done the calculations. Truthfully, he’d known that most of Max’s little schoolyard friends would be there, but, of all of them that he’d had bad blood with, his history with his sister’s ex-boyfriend was the worst. And to have his family tag along and bear witness to their unlikely reunion, well, that was just fucking great.

“Jane,” Max stated, looking at her but pointing at Billy with her can-holding hand. “Back me up here and tell him that nobody cares and that he’s welcome here.”

“She’s right,” Jane chirped. “You’re welcome here, Billy.”

He cupped his hands over his glasses to hide the unwanted flush of his face. At least the heat gave him a valid excuse. “Ugh.”

Jane waited until he’d leaned back in his chair to make eye contact with Max, who nodded, and they carried on a silent conversation for a few seconds. Billy didn’t like that shit at all, and he liked it even less when Jane finally spoke up again. “Max told me that you and Steve have been hanging out.”

He swiveled to look directly at Max, even lowered his sunglasses for a second so that she could see the warning look in his eyes, something specific that he reserved for her only. If he had even a shred less control, he’d be baring his eyeteeth, too. “Did she now?”

“Yeah, I just told her that you guys are friends now,” she emphasized each word carefully, jutting her chin out in defiance. “See, watch. Hey, Steve!”

Billy lunged out a hand to clamp it on her knee. “ _Max_ —”

Too late. From his seat a little ways down, Steve stopped talking to Nancy and Jonathan and turned bewildered eyes onto the three of them instead. It even caught some of the others’ attentions as well. “Yeah?”

“Isn’t it true that you’ve been hanging out with Billy all summer?”

Max was so very lucky that there were other people here right now, because, in all the years that he’d known her, he’d never wanted to chew her out more. How was it possible that she was handling this worse now than when she’d been baked out of her mind in June?

For everyone else, the interruption was momentary, and they went back to chatting—that is, everyone except for Jonathan and Nancy, who were still peering curiously in Billy’s direction with matching frowns. But Billy only had eyes for Steve, who was nervously looking between his friends and, on the flipside, anywhere else but Billy for once. “Uh…yeah. Why? Who’s asking?”

“Us,” Max said, jamming a thumb in Jane’s direction and then her own.

“Why didn’t you two say anything?” Jane asked, but it was out of genuine interest, not confrontational in the slightest. “It’s nice.”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, removing his own sunglasses from atop his head so he could nervously run his hands through his hair. “We’ve just been catching up while he’s still in town.” And then, entirely awkwardly and not fooling anyone, “Right?” He was speaking to Billy now, eyes just shy of pleading him to play it cool and not embarrass them both.

Easier said than done. “ _Mm_ ,” he agreed, looking between Steve and Jane and nodding emphatically to prove the point that Steve was clumsily trying to make. “How was the trip?”

Steve’s eyes were already wide, but they widened a little bit more out of confusion. “Trip?” He repeated, not having to raise his voice due to their relative proximity but doing so nonetheless.

Billy rolled his eyes. It worked on both levels: it looked like a friendly gesture _and_ conveyed his annoyance of how dim Steve could sometimes be. “To Seattle? Didn’t you go there this past week?”

As a side note, he didn’t miss how Nancy’s slender hand had settled on top of Steve’s, and a weird feeling flashed through his chest at the sight of it. What the hell did that mean? Steve didn’t need comforted over this, even though he was tongue-tied and acting odd. That wasn’t anything unusual. He knew that by now.

“Oh, god, yeah,” Steve shook his head at his own blunder. “Sorry, still kinda jet-lagged. It was good. Rainy, but good.”

“That’s good,” he repeated stiffly. He didn’t know what else to say, much less amid an audience.

Like Nancy and Jonathan, Max and Jane were watching the exchange with undivided attention. “You guys are weird,” Max declared, hiding her smile behind her Coke can. Jane didn’t say anything, but she had that funny, all-knowing look on her face that she was rather infamous for; she could put up a front like no one’s business, but Billy was often surprised at how dangerously knowledgeable she could be.

As if sensing his distress, Joyce broke from her muted conversation with Will and turned to Billy, and, just when he thought he couldn’t admire her more, here she was to save the day.

“So, Billy, any potential buyers for the house yet?” She asked, hands folded on her knees and making everyone else in the immediate vicinity look at her instead of him.

Infinitely glad for the change of topic and the chance to tear his eyes from Steve’s, he semi-nodded at her. “Had an interested family scope out the front of it last week, and, last I heard, they’re coming with their realtor this weekend.” He’d finally cleaned up as much of the yard and landscaping as he could be bothered to do; the lawn had been reseeded and would look night-and-day this time next year, and a couple of consultations and trips to a local hardware store had set him up with replacement screen panels and some (still-living) perennial foliage. But that was the extent of his excursion as a do-it-yourself homeowner: he’d hired professionals to come by and clean out the gutters and power wash every grimy square inch of the property, for he sure as shit wasn’t going to stand on a ladder all day in the heat or tempt fate by using equipment that he knew jack shit about. In his and his realtor’s opinions, the results were well worth the additional cost. “So that should be fun.”

“Fingers crossed,” Joyce said, nodding. Although it’d been a few years since she’d sold her home, she could evidently sympathize with how stressful the ordeal was. “Do you have a plan if it sells faster than you expected?”

“Not really. I’m not counting chickens before they hatch.”

“Oh, come on,” Max interjected. “It’s a nice house. Well, inside. And to anyone else but us. It’ll sell.”

“ _If_ it does,” he shrugged, keeping his voice trained. “Then I guess Jim and I’ll need to talk about how much longer I’m staying on. I’m not gonna leave him in the lurch, but I’d probably just head back home early instead of leasing another place for six months.”

Neither Joyce nor Max responded to that, because everyone’s attentions were drawn to the handful of people trickling in from around the side of the house. Billy took a deep breath in preparation and ground his feet into the grass, feeling some of the longer pieces tickle at the exposed skin of his ankles.

He immediately honed in on Lucas, who was surrounded by his parents, his college-aged sister, and a pretty Asian girl with long, sleek hair that was around his and Max’s age. Behind them were the rest of the Wheelers—he didn’t know the names of the older, sleepy-eyed heavyset man and the teenaged blonde-haired girl, but he was _quite_ familiar with Nancy’s mother. With her shoulder-length voluminous hair, sky blue dress, and face full of makeup, Karen Wheeler was just as much of a knock-out as she’d been back in the day, when he’d passed the time at the pool by buttering her up and enjoying the not-so-coy looks of longing that she’d give him from her plastic chaise lounge. Their flirting had never actually meant or amounted to anything; the first time, that night in November, he’d only poured on the sugar to methodically extract Max’s whereabouts from her. Generally, it had been an easy and gratuitous confidence boost, and, besides, it always used to make him smirk to know that he could produce that effect on women, especially since the attraction didn’t go both ways.

And, sure enough, once she and her family got close enough to start greeting and waving at the others, her gaze fell upon him and her eyes turned into dinner plates. He quirked the corner of his mouth at the flush that, even from behind his sunglasses, was noticeably starting to spread from her face to her décolletage.

The new arrivals took their scattered seats, and Karen didn’t say anything to him as she chose the empty chair next to Nancy, now purposefully keeping her painted eyes from straying in his direction. Billy turned to see if Max or Jane had noticed, but they’d turned their focuses to greeting Lucas and the two new girls. However, like Karen, Lucas had also caught sight of him, but, unlike Karen, he’d been eyeing Billy with blatant and reasonable suspicion since before he’d sat down. If Billy looked now, he’d see Max place a hand on top of Lucas’s arm, like Nancy had with Steve, and solely use her expression to signify that she’d explain later; but he didn’t, because it’d turned out that Steve was the only other person here who’d witnessed Billy’s smugness and Karen’s obvious embarrassment. He was frowning at Billy now, questionably holding up his hands, and it just made Billy shake his head and smirk all that much more. What’d (not) happened at the Hawkins Community Pool stayed at the Hawkins Community Pool, and Steve would just have to deal with it.

“Looks like we’re all here now,” Joyce stated, looking around at the chattering guests and speaking to no one in particular. She got out of her chair and crossed the yard to Hopper, who was sweaty and drinking a beer as he grilled, even though two of those three things were not specifically limited to this situation. They talked for a minute before Joyce went up the porch stairs and disappeared inside.

Absentmindedly, Billy looked from Hopper at the grill and back to Joyce’s empty chair—only one of two currently vacant—and was slightly surprised to find Will’s eyes already on him. From what he could hear, Wheeler was giving a brief history of Ethernet cables as an addendum to some upcoming nerd story; while Jane was—or merely acted—interested enough, Will was too focused on Billy to be truly listening.

“Your mom’s a cool lady,” Billy said eventually, needing to break the weird little staring contest that they had going on here.

Will nodded, a small smile fleeting across his thin lips at the complimentary mention of her. “Yeah,” he agreed. “She is. She’s talked a lot about you.”

“Has she?” Billy asked uncomfortably. While he trusted Joyce not to air out his dirty laundry, it still wasn’t reassuring to hear that they’d had secret conversations about him. He was a very paranoid man, after all.

“She said you’re really different,” Will continued, still nodding as though he’d forgotten to stop. “I just thought she meant you looked different. Not that you don’t, ’cause you do.”

“It’s just a haircut.” He gripped at the border on the fabric of the armrest, hating this awkward conversation more than all the others that he’d had in the last fifteen minutes combined. Will had eyes like Jane’s or Steve’s, ones that pierced and excavated and scoured without really meaning to. “Looks like you got one, too.”

“Still,” Will repeated quietly. Billy wanted to ask him what that meant, but Will looked past him to focus on Hopper, who was strolling across the yard with purpose and coming to a stop at the gap in the oval of chairs. At the same time, Joyce was descending the stairs again with a blue platter in hand, and she went to stand by the grill and dish up the seared hamburger patties with the spatula that Hopper had left behind.

“Alright, everyone, thanks for coming out,” Hopper clapped his big hands together. “It’s great to see you all. Everything’s ready, so come fix your plates. Cold stuff is inside on the kitchen counters, but the rest is out on the deck.”

The majority got up from their seats and started to shuffle in a line towards the stairs, still chatting and laughing gaily as they waited their turns to go up onto the deck so it wouldn’t get too crowded. Billy stayed put for the time being, even as Max, Jane, Wheeler, and Will got up and left him all alone; he didn’t feel like fighting the group right now, and, with how the sun was mercilessly hitting that part of the lawn, he’d much rather wait sitting here in the cooler shade.

A few other people had had the same idea, most notably Steve and Nancy, for the latter was currently busy arguing with a standing Jonathan. With their relative proximity, Billy couldn’t help but listen in on the heated conversation.

“I can get my own food,” she said firmly, waving the elder Byers son off in the direction of the line. “Seriously. I’m just going to wait here.” She shot out a hand in Steve’s direction. “Look, I’ve got company.”

“Nancy,” Jonathan sighed, exasperated. “Don’t be obstinate. Tell me what you want, and I’ll get it for you.”

“ _Obstinate_ ,” she repeated, and Billy caught Steve covering his mouth with his knuckles to stifle his laugh. “Okay, that does it.”

She half-stood up from her chair now, and the sight of her all at once made Billy blink repeatedly and his mouth go dry. Without a doubt, he’d forgotten that Wheeler was currently pregnant, and he stared at the visual evidence now: beneath some frilly blouse, the swell of her stomach was like a perfect crescent moon and utterly disjointed with the rest of her bony, waif-like figure. She had her hands clasped on the flimsy armrests for support and, back arching, purposefully avoided the two sets of hands that reached out to help, even brushed Jonathan’s away when he still moved in to assist her. But then she was up and smoothing those slender hands over that prominent curvature, fixing the flipped hemline of her shirt and breezing past Jonathan, but not before patting him on the lower back in a way that looked patronizing to Billy but was probably anything but. He didn’t know the nuances of their weirdo marriage.

Steve was staring at Nancy as if he’d never seen her before today, only breaking that gaze to reciprocate the long-suffering look that Jonathan threw his way before he followed after her. But then his stare went right back to the spot where Nancy had just been, and, although separated by some empty chairs, that just left him and Billy on this corner of the oval. On the opposite side, Callahan and Powell were still sitting and laughing about a story that clearly wasn’t about work, and a little ways down was the unnamed teenaged girl with pastel butterfly clips in her blonde hair, who’d only come back in the last few seconds with a half-full plate and a bottle of water.

Billy removed his sunglasses for a brief moment so that he could pinch at the bridge of his nose. Even with nobody watching, he played it off as if his glasses had been digging into the cartilage, but, in all actuality, he had an enormous headache forming in addition to his sudden and unexplained queasiness. Like a light switch, the always-humming buzz for a nicotine fix slapped him in the face, and he stood from his wobbly chair with unwavering determination to fulfill that need. Now and then, he felt guilty about giving in to its demands; in recent years, he’d really forced himself to do better at not smoking like a chimney, especially since it made breathing, running, and other physical activities (job-wise or not) that much more difficult. But this situation had forced his hand, and he figured that there weren’t many other times where he’d deserve one as badly as right now. The guilt would still come later, as it always did, but the promise of dealing with his crawling skin and taking some of the unbearable edge off was too powerful of a lure.

He started to move straight ahead in the direction of the side of the house, intending to step between some chairs in his path, but a specific weakness compelled him to stop by Steve’s seat and use his thumb to point in the direction of the makeshift parking lot out front. “Hey,” he said, making Steve’s faraway gaze snap up to him. “Want a cig?”

Looking between him and the ever-decreasing line of people, Steve took a long minute to consider his options. “I shouldn’t,” he said, glancing questionably at the bored blonde girl three chairs down. “I don’t think I can.”

Billy chewed his lip at him. “There a reason?” He asked slowly, shoving his sweaty hands into the front pockets of his jeans. To anyone else, he just sounded inquisitive, maybe scornful, but there was a burning question hidden between the lines that only the two of them could hear.

“No, there isn’t,” Steve said through slightly gritted teeth. “What I meant was that I don’t think I can leave without them noticing…us.”

 _Fuck that_ , Billy wanted to say. _My loudmouth, pain-in-the-ass sister practically broadcast to the world that we’ve been hanging out. They don’t care, so why should you?_

“Suit yourself,” he said instead, turning away and moving towards the gap in the oval. It was a little more cumbersome to get around the people filtering in, but enough of them had returned by now that it would be rude to even try to squeeze past their chairs.

He was only a few steps out of the oval, about to pass by one of the big oaks next to the house, when he heard muffled steps in the grass directly behind him. He didn’t stop as he peered over his shoulder, probably because the specific sound—low and flat, like a rubber sole without an arch—had given him more than enough of a clue as to who it was.

Steve had his arms crossed and a closed look on his face when Billy caught his eye. “Please tell me you’ve got a whole pack.”

“I’ve got half,” Billy snorted, shaking his head. “But it’s my emergency stash, so we’re going to have to share.”

“Miser. Fine by me.”

Gesturing for him to follow, Billy moved towards his truck on the other side of the front lawn, now conscious of Steve hot on his heels. He wanted to comment on why Steve had inexplicably changed his mind, but, on second thought, he didn’t really need to; he was too busy loathing the unexplained warm feeling that Steve’s isolated company brought to his chest.

He really did need that cigarette.

* * *

There was something odd about how comfortable it felt to sit with Billy on the front steps of Hopper and Joyce’s house. Steve didn’t know how something so mundane still managed to take him by surprise; perhaps it was down to how much had changed between them, or perhaps he was just overly relieved to take a breather away from the ongoing party. If Billy felt the same way, he didn’t show it, for he’d gone to his unlocked truck, produced a carton and a lighter with suspicious promptness, and had had a lit cigarette in his mouth before Steve could even sit upon the stoop.

Billy, currently still hogging the communal cigarette, took another deep, deep drag before handing it over. He leaned back against the riser, setting both of his elbows on the step behind him and stretching his legs out onto the driveway, and his left thigh grazed against Steve’s right in the process. Steve paused to stare at the ominous smoking cigarette now pinched between his own fingers, giving it one very formidable look of apprehension, only to relent and press it to his lips. At the too-familiar burning sensation bitterly emanating into his mouth and lungs, he was very aware that he hadn’t smoked in several years; regardless of what was going on with his personal situation, the very last thing that he needed was to relearn a bad habit, much less jump-start the addiction that he’d garnered during that awful year in Indianapolis. At his lowest point, he used to smoke plural packs a day just to have a chance at curbing enough of his stress and discontent so that he could sleep through the night—or, at that time, at least more than a few consecutive hours.

The potent taste keenly brought back those long-buried memories, and, for that reason alone, Steve kept his drags to a minimum so that Billy would absorb more of it than him. Regardless, he still felt the nicotine rush coming on, welcomed it like an old friend, and sagged against the stairs as that blissful artificial calmness swept over him. He hadn’t really realized how much he’d needed this upon Billy’s initial offer, but, going over his day so far, it was of little surprise to him now. There was a lot to unpack.

Steve had gotten there early to offer his help, but Joyce had very resolutely dashed that idea as soon as he’d entered the house. Apparently, volunteering had been on a first-come-first-serve basis, and she had more than enough assistance for one party with Jane, Mike, Max, and even Will—who’d gotten here from Cincinnati on Friday night to stay for the long weekend—already there. And, in true mom fashion, as she’d washed broccoli in the sink for a vegetable tray, she’d playfully shooed him off to the backyard and specifically out of her kitchen. Max, acting as her bouncer, had then herded Steve out of the house, and she’d even shut the glass door in his face to make a point. He’d stared indignantly at her through the glass, but that was that.

The slight hadn’t lasted long, because the sight of Nancy and Jonathan already sitting in the makeshift oval of chairs had caught his eye. Walking down the deck stairs and over to the quasi-shade—it’d grown deeper once the sun had moved from the east to directly overhead, but that’d taken another hour or so—they’d exchanged happy salutations from afar, although the first thing that he’d done up close was eye the empty seat separating the two of them. “Should I ask?”

“We didn’t want to talk over each other to talk to you,” Jonathan had replied, peering up at Steve with creased, permanently worried eyes while holding his palms up. His plain black baseball cap, slightly askew, had coordinated with his Pablo Honey t-shirt that he’d gotten from a Radiohead concert two years ago. _Go fuckin’ figure_ , Steve had inwardly snorted.

Nancy, brushing a long strand of dark brown hair out of her face, had had her legs crossed at the knee, inadvertently showing off her pristine white Keds by tapping her elevated foot. “Y’know, just because we’re married doesn’t mean we always have to be joined at the hip,” she’d said, smiling as she’d pointed a thin, unpolished finger at Steve’s tentative seat.

“Whatever you say.” Steve’s head shaking had been imperceptible as he’d turned around to sit where she’d directed; once he’d gotten as comfortable in the rickety contraption as he feasibly could be, he’d set his elbows on the armrests and steepled his fingers. Looking around, they’d been the only ones in chairs at this point, and there hadn’t been anyone else in the backyard as far as he could tell. “Where’re the others?”

“Getting the propane tank refilled with Hop,” Jonathan had explained, making a face that’d expressed his feelings on the matter quite well. “I offered to help, but he wanted to use this as an opportunity to teach Will and Mike.”

“Should we call the fire department ahead of time?” Steve had snorted, mirroring Nancy’s pose and bringing his own legs up.

Jonathan had rolled his eyes. “You joke, but don’t count it out.”

“So,” Nancy had piped up. “What’s new in your world?”

“Nothing much,” Steve had said carefully, immediately feeling guilty for technically lying. _Very_ much had happened since he’d last seen them at Dustin’s wedding, but it’d been neither the time nor the place to start discussing his ongoing involvement with Billy. Truthfully, he hadn’t known where to begin even if he’d wanted to. “Y’know, I was just about to ask the same thing to you two, but that’d be a very dumb question.”

“ _Mm_ , only a little,” Nancy had joked, glancing down at her stomach and gently sliding her hand over it.

He’d watched her hand move over her salmon pink blouse, and his chest had constricted at the sight. “Well, that’s for sure. It’s just the same old, same old for me. Ninety-nine percent of my life is driving or flying, and peddling fine art fits in there somewhere.”

“God, I know it’s been years,” Jonathan had said, shaking his head. “But I’ve got to say, I’m still surprised that’s what you ended up doing.”

Steve had merely shrugged, because that was just how life worked—there was too much truth behind that old Yiddish adage of ‘man plans, and God laughs’. As a teenager, he’d never really had any definite hopes or dreams for the future, mostly because he’d been resigned to the fact that he’d end up working for his dad until it was his turn to take the reins. And when that had fallen apart, and he’d been left on uncharted territory, it’d just been easier to let the pieces fall into place as they’d so wished than to force something anew. It’d worked out well, at least, so far.

“You were terrible in art class,” Nancy had recalled, doe eyes slightly unfocused. “With the amount of shit that you gave Mrs. O’Quinn, she probably still has your face on a dart board somewhere.”

He’d smirked at the old memory, tipping his head back a little. Like any hormonal teenage boy that didn’t properly value the publicly educated arts, he might’ve unintentionally pressed the teacher’s buttons now and again. “In my defense, she was just uptight, ’cause I actually did try. And it’s not like I ever made that much of a mess. Most of the time.”

“I’m more referring to all the blatantly phallic sculptures that you made,” she’d said dryly, making Jonathan choke on his laughter. “Okay, you weren’t the only boy doing it, but that was a real King Steve move.”

 _King Steve_. He hadn’t heard that nickname aloud in years, and he’d preferred to keep it that way; any remembrance of how he’d used to act—and the fallout that it’d caused—had never failed to make his blood go cold. Although Nancy hadn’t meant it as such, this case had been no exception.

“I wish I still had some of those,” he’d said, quickly moving past the sour associations of his old persona. “Suspiciously, someone always smashed the few that ever made it to the kiln. But you know what they say,” he’d waved a hand in mock snobbery, “only the good artists get censored.”

The three of them had shared a chuckle, the sound carrying on the breeze of the trees and birds chirping overhead.

“Good times,” Steve had concluded, holding a crooked index finger to his curved lips and exhaling loudly at the ever-increasing passage of time. “And now we’re almost thirty and _old_. Man, to be brainless teenagers again.”

Nancy had made a face as she’d jabbed a thumb in her and Jonathan’s directions. “Hey, hey, speak for yourself! We’re both still twenty-eight for a couple more months, grandpa.”

“Oh, yeah?” Steve had quirked an eyebrow. “What about when you’re parents before the year’s out, _mom_?”

“Only then,” she’d agreed. “And November’s still a little ways away. She’s not here yet.”

“You guys have any names picked out?” Steve had asked, immediately feeling dazed by hearing such a concrete pronoun. Back in mid-July, Nancy had called him up out-of-the-blue with the gender reveal, right around the same time that she was officially sharing the news with everyone outside of her immediate family; since Joyce had already told him on the Fourth, he’d had to act believably surprised. Now that the secret was out, it was becoming less of a hypothetical and more of a reality every day.

“Yeah,” Jonathan had replied, locking eyes with Nancy and sharing a look that decidedly hadn’t been meant for Steve to understand. “We’ve got an idea.”

“But we’re keeping it under wraps until then,” Nancy had said, before quickly adding, “and not just from you—from everyone. Not even our parents know. Sorry.”

Steve had held up two placating palms to show that he hadn’t been offended. “Hey, I get it. It’s not like you’re going to have to keep it a secret for much longer—November’ll be here before we all know it.”

“No, we won’t,” Jonathan had agreed. Nancy had smiled sympathetically at him, because his tone was somehow more solemn than usual. “Ten weeks left, give or take.”

“Hey, Jonathan!”

That had been Will, cupping his hands around his mouth to yell from across the yard. Next to him, Mike had stood with his hands on his own bony hips, his body language doing a highly accurate job of conveying how completely fed up he was with something.

“Here we go,” Jonathan had muttered. Then he’d yelled back, “Yeah?”

“D’you know how to tell if a propane tank is properly hooked up?”

Jonathan had taken a brief moment to frown at Steve and Nancy before looking back at his brother. “Where’d Hop go?”

In the distance, Will had made a point of shrugging exaggeratedly before dipping out of sight beneath the grill.

“He left it to us!” Mike had called back, annoyed and shaking his head at the now-hidden Will for being needlessly vague. “He’s getting the big-ass cooler out of the basement for your mom!”

Jonathan had just been getting out of his seat when Will’s shrill swears had started carrying across the yard in perfect comedic timing. “Ah shit, I think I unhooked it!”

“Hang on, hang on!” Jonathan had yelled. As he’d moved in the direction of the other side of the deck, he’d loudly grumbled, “Twenty-four years old, and they act like children sometimes, I swear.” But then he’d entered into a light jog at the inauspicious sound of a hollow _clang_. “Will, stop touching that!”

Steve had disguised his quiet laughter around clearing his throat. “Well,” he’d said evenly, turning back to Nancy once Jonathan was out of earshot. “Never a dull moment.”

She had her big eyes locked on Jonathan by the grill, who, at that point, had been making a show of deliberately pushing his little brother out of the way. “You’re telling me.”

Steve had chanced a glance at her extended stomach. “Do you think he’s ready?”

Nancy had immediately turned back to face Steve, catching him looking at her midsection and breaking into a small smile because of it. “Absolutely,” she’d said without pause. “To tell you the truth, we’ve been ready for years. But being broke and living between California and New York meant we had to put it off. It’s been a long time coming.”

“Say what you will about Indianapolis—” And Steve could’ve said many things about his time spent there, even though the actual city hadn’t been the root of his problems. “—but after living in two of the most expensive cities in the US, it must feel pretty damn cheap.”

She’d given a tiny sigh of agreement. “God, does it ever. Not to brag, but we have a big house in the suburbs with enough room to grow and a decently short commute. While we’re a little further away from our families than we probably should be, and the weather and city life here can’t hold a candle to the coast, it’s still a worthy trade-off.” She’d taken a moment to think something over. “How much longer do you think Robin and Heather will stick it out?”

“Who knows,” he’d replied, having already wondered the same thing. “They’re lucky enough to have a rent-controlled apartment, but it’s only getting more expensive and colder there every year. And Robin’s _not_ a winter person. She calls and complains every time a snowflake falls from the sky, like it’s somehow my fault.”

“Y’know, I think they’d like Miami or— _ah_.” Nancy had suddenly stopped and had shuttered her eyes, grimacing in apparent pain as she’d dug an upturned hand into her left side.

Instantly alarmed, Steve’s eyes had gone comically wide. “Are you okay?” He’d glanced wildly between her and what little that he’d been able to see going on over at the grill. “Should I get Jonathan?”

He’d been seconds from getting up and doing it anyways, and the only thing that’d stopped him was her tossing an arm out and placing her hand on top of his. At first, he’d thought it was for her own comfort, but he’d quickly realized that it’d been meant to assuage his growing panic. “No, no, it’s not that,” she’d managed, breathing out heavily through her mouth. “ _Phew_. Just got a really strong kick in the ribs, that’s all.”

“Oh,” he’d said, resettling himself in his seat and still feeling his heart race from worry. “Uh, ouch? Sorry.”

She’d still been pressing a hand to her ribcage and working on evening out her breathing when she’d suddenly turned to face him, face bright with some unspoken idea. “Hey, do you want to feel?”

“I—uh—”

Without really meaning to, he’d automatically started to shift back in his seat. He’d never been that intimate before with someone who was pregnant; he was an only child, and most of his cousins didn’t live close by, which left little opportunity to experience it through secondhand familial ties. In retrospect, no wonder Nancy’s announcement back at Dustin’s wedding had shaken him so hard—all these years, he’d been sheltered from that part of life.

Nancy had just rolled her eyes at him. “Other than when it hurts, like right now, it’s cool, really.” Not taking no for an answer, she’d taken the same hand that she’d placed atop of his and had pulled both closer to her torso. When he didn’t immediately pull away, she’d used that as a go-ahead to place it on the opposite side of her stomach from where she’d just felt movement.

They hadn’t had to wait long. One second, his fingers had been numb against the unnaturally— _it wasn’t though, was it?_ —perfect curve of her belly, and the next, _something_ had brushed against her insides and against his skin. It’d been infinitesimal at first, a little fluttering of an ambiguous blob that he couldn’t even begin to grasp, but then a stronger, insistent _push_ solidified the fact that there was an actual fist or a foot swirling around in there somewhere.

“See?” She’d stated, grinning at how his face had drained of blood within mere seconds. “Cool, right?”

“Fuck,” he’d breathed, torn between wanting to pull his hand away in shock and keeping it there out of utter fascination. Then his words had caught up with him, how easily they could’ve been misconstrued, and he’d swallowed heavily. “Sorry, that sounded bad. Nance, that’s fucking _insane_.”

Unruffled, she’d lifted her hand off his and had exhaled a little laugh. “No, you’re right. It _is_ fucking insane. The fact that everyone in the world did this to someone—” She’d tapped a finger on the top of her stomach. “—at some point really makes you appreciate who you came from more.”

Now without Nancy’s hand there to steady his own, Steve had felt too awkward to keep it there much longer; he’d counted to ten before pulling away and wedging it under his knee, his skin still electrified from the phantom sensation on his fingertips. Blinking rapidly because of his now-dry eyes, he’d tentatively asked, “She…does that all the time?”

“Mostly when I talk a lot or lie down,” Nancy had explained, both hands in her lap and the sides of her arms resting against the curve. “And she’s a night owl, so that makes trying to sleep a lot of fun.”

“How aren’t you, god, I don’t know—freaked out by that?” Steve hadn’t been able to comprehend how suddenly eerily calm she was about it, merely moments after she’d practically been doubled over in pain. “That there’s something always there, inside of you, doing all of that for months?”

Nancy’s little shrug had been casual, but the look on her face had been anything but. “Y’know, I thought I would be. It’s an ominous thing to think about before it ever happens, and I imagined some kind of _Alien_ nightmare. But it really couldn’t be more different.”

“How so?”

“For starters,” she’d snorted. “This isn’t some extra-terrestrial sci-fi movie with a thinly veiled interspecies rape allegory for its plot.”

Steve had fixed her with a disbelieving look. “You know a lot about _Alien_.”

“Jonathan’s made me watch all three of them multiple, multiple times, blame him,” she’d shook her head. “Anyways, this isn’t some chestburster—this is my _daughter_. Yeah, she’s always pressing on my bladder, and her kicking sometimes keeps me up at night, but it’s…I don’t know, it’s just proof she’s in there with me. We’re in this together. It’s kinda hard to explain, honestly, and words wouldn’t do it justice.”

Her voice had started to falter with unexpressed emotion about halfway through, and Steve hadn’t wanted to see her upset, so he’d jumped in before things could get too heavy between them; the last thing that he’d wanted was to make a pregnant woman cry at a barbecue. “I think I get it. I mean, not really, of course I don’t,” he’d clarified, because it hadn’t taken a genius to realize that that wasn’t something you could ever really understand without firsthand experience. “But it’s like a…bond. Like, how mothers can flip cars for their kids in danger and shit.”

That had made her grin at him again, a little watery this time, as she’d conceded the point. “That might be more because of weirdo amounts of adrenaline, but, yeah, exactly.” She’d tucked another loose strand of hair behind her ear and, although her tone had been light, then had said something that’d caused his heart to leap into his throat. “And not to be _that_ kind of friend, but maybe, someday, you could know what it’s like, too.”

“Maybe,” he’d repeated faintly, blood pounding in his ears from his racing pulse. Although Nancy had had good intentions, she couldn’t have known just how much that’d struck a very raw nerve; more than ever before, he’d wanted to tell her about the admittedly harebrained scheme that he’d concocted a few months ago due in no small part to her, but there’d been no point if he didn’t know the ultimate answer himself. Regardless of the outcome, he’d tell her someday, but not like this. Not right now. Not when she was actually pregnant, and he wasn’t. “We’ll just have to see what the future brings.”

Fortunately, they’d gone back to talking about trivial things until Jonathan’s return from the grill, shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose from his lingering exasperation; then, the three of them had resumed idle chatter even as other guests had started to arrive, mostly swapping stories about work and the kids’ (only in name) own lives. To his credit, Steve had played it off well, but he’d never stopped thinking of Nancy’s words or what he’d felt in her stomach, nor had he been able to shake the effect that both had had on him. It’d persisted when Max had popped her head out of the kitchen to call to Joyce on the deck, “He’s here!”, and it’d only gotten worse when Steve, the only other person who’d heard that, had made a hasty excuse to Jonathan and Nancy so he could follow Joyce into the house to get a glimpse of the man of the hour. And it’d hung like a cloud over the remainder of the day, from taking the pop cans from Max, to holding the door for her and Billy, to talking to him in front of everyone about his recent trip to Seattle with the aplomb of an antisocial recluse. It’d even followed him here, to the porch stairs, where he was squirreling himself away from his longtime friends just to smoke a solo cigarette with some fragment from his past.

Breaking out of his lengthy reverie, Steve could feel Billy watching him from the corner of his eye and, finally ready to break the companionable silence, now turned to face him head-on. They spoke at the same time.

“Are you—”

“I don’t know anything.”

Blinking at each other, Billy recovered first. “Come again?”

“Before you ask,” Steve said tersely, his back ramrod straight on the composite step. “I don’t have any news about you-know-what.” Although his hopes and fears had been ballooning out of control with each passing day, it was still too early to start even thinking about trying a test. That and the little voice inside his head, the one that already perceived his most recent try as a failure, was the biggest reason why he didn’t feel too guilty over accepting something as inherently detrimental to his health as a cigarette.

“Code names, huh?” Billy’s laugh was brash. “Nobody can hear us, you know. And that wasn’t even what I was asking about.”

“You don’t know that,” Steve pointed out, paranoiacally glancing back at the front windows just to prove his own point. He actually couldn’t tell all that well with the sunlight in his eyes, but he still chose to err on the side of caution, even though everyone was realistically busy eating and talking in the backyard. “But, whatever, what did you want to ask?”

Snatching up the cigarette, Billy made a point of taking a heavy pull, and the butt glowed cherry red in the process. When he spoke, a hazy puff of smoke drifted upwards into the air and mingled with a beam of sunlight. “Are you still going to be the godfather?”

It didn’t surprise Steve that Billy also had Nancy’s baby on the brain; she hadn’t exactly been easy to miss, and Steve himself couldn’t think of anything else right now, either. Nodding, he said, “As far as I know, yeah. I’ve already accepted, so I’d assume it’s a done deal. Not that it means much in the first place—it’s just a nice symbolic gesture.”

“No,” Billy grunted. Another stream of smoke flew past the minute opening between his lips, and he took the opportunity to roughly shove the cigarette back into Steve’s hands, as if both it and Steve had personally offended him.

“Huh?” In his mind, Steve went over what he’d just said and couldn’t decipher what’d caused Billy’s instant disapproval. “‘No’, what?”

“No, it’s not nothing,” Billy said sternly, and Steve was surprised to find that he really meant it. His frown was deep, and his fingers were twitching in a way that had nothing to do with his own intake of nicotine. “It’s a religious commitment that’s been diluted down to an obligation to send some shithead kid a card on their birthdays. Go ask Byers if he even knows what catechesis is.”

“What, are you religious or something?” Steve laughed breathlessly, raising the more or less finished cigarette and faintly grimacing at the saliva-moistened tip when it reached his lips.

Billy’s intense, unblinking eye contact didn’t waver for a second. “Yes, I am,” he said entirely humorlessly, matter-of-factly.

With the cigarette now hanging from his mouth, Steve cocked his head and scoured Billy’s expression to ascertain whether he was telling the truth or just had a legendary poker face. “Seriously?”

Billy, huffing out a sigh, fisted a hand into his almost completely unbuttoned shirt to yank out the chain of that necklace he always wore. “I’m Catholic,” he raised the glimmering golden medallion to the light so that Steve could finally get a good look at it. “Go to Mass every week. Always have.”

“You’ve gone every Sunday morning for your entire life?” Steve distinctly recalled that the first time Billy had come over to donate had been early on a Sunday, but he couldn’t remember if Billy had said anything about coming from or needing to go to church. Other than a few _specific_ incidences, these past few months had been a blur. “Are you kidding me?”

“That’s not what I said,” Billy grumbled. “I _prefer_ to go on Sundays because it’s the actual Lord’s Day, but, depending on my schedule, I’m not adverse to weeknights, Fridays, or Saturdays. All that matters to me is that I go at least once a week, and, unless I’m in the hospital recovering from gunshot wounds, I do. Even then, I made an effort—pissed off every nurse that crossed my path, and then some.”

“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” Steve asked faintly, still staring at the necklace hanging from Billy’s fingers, a minuscule bas-relief of the Virgin Mary holding an even tinier Jesus in her arms. “Here I was, thinking you were a godless heathen all these years.”

Stuffing it back under his open shirt, Billy fixed him with a sideways look, but the corners of his eyes were creased in humor. “You been thinking of me for years?”

“There it is,” Steve rolled his eyes and snorted out a laugh, sending a faint stream of smoke out of his nostrils. “No, but maybe it would’ve prepared me for your sudden devout piousness.”

“Your family’s from Italy, right?” Billy asked so quickly that it almost counted as an interruption. He then snapped his mouth shut, as if he were suddenly having trouble broaching the topic, and only at Steve’s brief nod did he continue his abrupt line of questioning. “The majority of Italians are Roman Catholic, ’cause the Pope and Vatican City are there. What about you?”

Back during that fateful year in Indianapolis, Steve’s father had allotted several hours out of his workweek to call Steve into his vast office and give him a series of unending totalitarian lectures. Most of the time, they were just pieces of wisdom that he wished to impart on his son—as he’d put it, things that he’d need to know when he ran the company one day—but, occasionally, it would turn into an excuse to reprimand Steve for any teeny-tiny social faux pas that he’d recently made. Nearly all of the lessons had faded away with time, although the shame and resentment still lingered; but Steve still remembered one specific instance of his father emphatically pointing a meaty finger in his chest, staring down at him with a stony face and eyebrows drawn together so tightly that they’d almost touched. “Don’t _ever_ talk about politics or religion,” he’d growled, even though Steve hadn’t. “Never, not even off-duty. You’re representing a company now, Steven, and that never stops. And if you ever do, you better hope I don’t find out about it.”

His father’s words still ringing in his ears, a little vindictive part of Steve wished that he could bottle this conversation up and send it to him. Hell, let him see everything that he’d been doing with Billy these past few months—the gasket that he’d blow would be a sight to behold.

“Mom was,” he said, feeling rather free from not feeling guilty or afraid in the slightest. Even if he’d been adverse to it, there was little point in keeping secrets from Billy, because they’d had _sex_ , for Christ’s sake; withholding anything after that was pretty much the definition of a moot point. “Is, technically. My nonna is very devout from being raised in the church, just like you. Mom still identifies as such, but she pretty much stopped practicing when she married my dad. He’s a Protestant.”

Listening to him intently, Billy suddenly sucked air in through his teeth. “Bet your grandma didn’t like that.”

Steve laughed aloud and bobbed his head. “Not even a little bit,” he smiled, thinking back to a few choice examples in his childhood—specifically, that one Thanksgiving when he was nine, where shit had all but hit the fan. “But the initial fallout happened long before I came around. Mom told me that nonna had to find her peace with it, and she did. For the most part.”

“ _Mm._ ” Billy crossed his arms and rested them on his knees, but his side-eyed stare stayed glued to Steve’s face. “You didn’t exactly answer my question.”

There were those pushy detective instincts rearing their ugly head again. “I’m non-denominational, bordering on agnostic,” Steve shrugged, looking out at the yard of cars. He had his days where he needed religion and days that he didn’t, but he’d never been able to definitively choose one side or the other; unsurprisingly, that was also the same thought process for many aspects of his adult life. “I’ll go to church on holidays, but, when I’m not traveling, I’m usually busy catching up on sleep. As it is, my schedule doesn’t leave much time for worship.” He didn’t need to look over at Billy to tell that his offended frown was deep and scouring, and Steve hurried to amend himself before he could get a scathing word in otherwise. “ _I_ don’t make much time for it, that is.”

In a snap, Billy’s expression went carefully neutral. He sat up a little on the step and slightly twisted his torso to face Steve. “You ever open to going?”

“What, to Mass?” Steve looked at him askance. “I mean, I’m not _not_ open to it.” That was true, but, last he checked, there weren’t many Catholic chapels around Hawkins. On the outskirts, sure, but this was mostly a Presbyterian and Lutheran community. “Despite my nonna’s best intentions, I don’t know much about Catholicism other than always feeling guilty about something. And God knows I don’t need any help there.”

Ignoring his half-hearted attempt at a joke, Billy brusquely asked, “You free next Sunday?”

Steve opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “I—I’m not going to lie, yeah, course I am. When aren’t I?”

“Then let’s go,” Billy said simply, as if it were the easiest answer in the world. “Think of it as godparent training. It’ll give you a new perspective, and maybe you can even teach your ignorant friends a thing or two.”

“Uh, okay,” Steve blinked. At the very least, going to Mass on a non-holiday for the first time in years would give him some brownie points from his grandma the next time that he talked to her, maybe even from God, if he were lucky. “Why not. Uh…where should I meet you?”

“I’ll pick you up,” Billy said, very clearly telling him instead of offering. “I’ve been going to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne.”

Steve wanted to comment on the sick irony of the name to their situation, but the location intrigued him just a little bit more. “I’m sorry,” he held up a hand. “You’re telling me that you drive two hours every week just to go to and from church?”

Billy gave him a searching look. “What’s the problem? You do it every day for work.”

“No problem…just kinda weird. For you.”

“Not really,” he replied, glancing at the finished cigarette stub in Steve’s hands and lifting the pack from his lap to pull out a fresh one, extreme rationing be damned. “If I’m too tired or the weather’s real shitty, I’ll go to one that’s about twenty minutes away, but those are the only exceptions. I like the drive, and any excuse to get me out of Hawkins for at least a few hours is good in my book.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Steve agreed. “Wh—”

He was interrupted by the creaky sound of the screen door opening from behind them, and both Steve and Billy whipped around to see Max pushing through. Letting the spring close it for her, she came up to the edge of the porch and leaned her crossed arms on the tan railing, overlooking the spot where Steve and Billy were sitting a little ways down.

“Hey, dummies,” she said casually. “Quick question, what are you doing? Just purposefully waiting until all the food’s been picked over?”

“My handler,” Billy irascibly snorted, rolling his eyes at Steve so hard it looked like it hurt. He didn’t even tilt his head up at her again; he just waved a hand behind his head and took a long, fresh drag. “Not hungry, Max. Buzz off.”

She made a miffed sound of her own. “Hey, believe me, I don’t care. I was busy eating and talking to Lucas and Yvonne. It was Joyce and Jane who’d wondered where you two had evaporated off to.” She paused for a second, and her tone softened, perhaps due to the sunlight spotlighting the conspicuous sight of Billy’s tightly hunched shoulders. “Seriously, do you at least want something cool to drink? It’s hot out.”

When Billy didn’t immediately answer, blatantly preoccupying himself with smoking, Steve gave him a light nudge in the ribs with his elbow. Truthfully, he didn’t know what’d compelled him to do so, and Billy’s sudden open-eyed stare at him meant that it was a mutual feeling. But the shock must’ve had some effect on him, because he cleared his throat and finally shifted around on the step to look up at Max.

“’M good,” he coughed out, shakily toeing the line between audibly appreciating her concern and making it clear that he didn’t want any further discussion. “Go back to your friends.”

As the lone witness, Steve looked between both of their faces—Billy’s guarded expression in response to Max’s uneasiness—and, try as he might, he couldn’t decipher the silent conversation going on between the two of them. Max could, however, and apparently quite fluently, at that; after a few more seconds of reproachfully staring at her brother, she just breathed out through her nose in concession and redirected her attention to him instead. “What about you, Steve? Want anything?”

Steve glanced at Billy as he shook his head, but then he looked up to smile thinly up at her. “Fine for right now, thanks, Max.”

She looked as convinced by him as she’d been by Billy, but she clearly knew better than to press further. “Whatever,” she huffed, moving off the railing and back towards the front door. “Enjoy your appetite-suppressing cigarettes, ladies.”

“Plan on it,” Billy called after her as she passed through, leaving them all alone again. With his growing agitation, he didn’t seem eager to let them lapse back into silence, and, as soon as they were sure she was gone, he immediately turned to Steve. “You staying much longer?”

“Of course. My friends are here, I can’t just leave.” Steve dropped their long-since-finished cigarette on the driveway and went to grind it out with his shoe, but he stopped upon remembering that he was at Hopper and Joyce’s house. Instead, he leaned down to extinguish the remaining embers and then placed it gently on the bottom step for the time being, stubby but intact, until he could get up and throw it in the trash like a good guest.

“Ugh, I wish I could,” Billy grumbled, closing his eyes and scratching at his wrinkled-up forehead with his occupied hand.

“It’s not that bad here,” he shrugged, shifting back on their shared step and looking up at the sunny skies. “At least it’s nice out.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“When we head back, you could switch seats with Ted so you’d be able to talk to Phil, Calvin, and Hop,” Steve now tried. “I’m sure there’s plenty of boring police convos you could kill time with.”

“Ted?” Billy asked, cracking an eye open. “What, is that a nickname for one of the rugrats?”

He wanted to laugh at him, but then he realized that it made perfect sense that Billy wouldn’t have a clue; it was Steve who had dated his daughter once upon a time, not Billy. “Mr. Wheeler,” he explained. “Nancy and Mike’s dad. And Holly’s, too, but since you don’t know him, you wouldn’t know her. She’s the younger blonde girl here.”

Billy sat up suddenly, forehead further bunching up in realization. “Whoa, hold on, Karen’s married to _that_ old schmuck?” He exclaimed, flinging a hand out and getting ash all over his jeans. “No shit, I thought that was her dad or something.”

“Karen,” Steve repeated, mouth making a little _pop_ as it opened. “You don’t know Ted, but you’re on first name basis with her, huh? You know, I’m not even going to ask.”

Billy actually laughed aloud, even though he still looked stunned. “That’s for the best,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Ted Wheeler—what was she even thinking? What, was it money? Or is he packing or something?”

“ _Ew_ , man, I don’t want to think about that shit.” He couldn’t help but crack a smile at Billy’s now-wicked laughter; emboldened by his earlier brush with touching him, he smacked the back of his hand against Billy’s shoulder. “I would’ve introduced you two, but it seems like you’d have your differences.”

“Such as?”

Steve schooled his face into a deadpan, long-drawn look, even though the corners of his mouth twitched from fighting the smile that threatened to return in full force. “Well, for starters, you just called him ugly and completely out of his league, two out of three of his kids still don’t particularly like you, and you’ve got some weird, presumably semi-sexual history with his wife. I’m sure he’s just dying to meet you.”

“Touché, Harrington,” Billy said, wiping at the corners of his eyes with his scraped knuckles. His perfectly white grin was somehow brighter and more beautiful than the sun, and it blinded Steve, but he couldn’t look away if he wanted to. “Touché.”

* * *

When Nancy and Jonathan had arrived at his mom’s house earlier that day, Joyce had been mindful enough to take them both aside and give them a warning that _Billy Hargrove_ would be attending the party. “I didn’t want it to be a shock,” she’d said, laying a hand on her oldest son’s shoulder when his eyes had turned hard and his mouth had gone taut. “But Billy works with Jim, and he’s become a friend of ours now. He’s really very sweet.”

“ _Sweet?_ ”

They’d gone back and forth for a little bit, drawing out a few more pieces of information from her—“What do you mean he’s _friends_ with _Steve_? When the hell did that happen?”—until Jonathan had thrown up his hands and had all but stomped off. While Nancy had kept her composure a little better than her husband had, nothing had stopped her from staring daggers at Billy when he’d finally showed his face.

With one hand lazily hooked in a belt loop and that stupid open shirt billowing in the zephyr, he’d been a blast from the past, and not a welcome one. She would’ve been lying if she’d said he didn’t look good—nothing had changed there, in all actuality, it’d only gotten better. _Ugh._ But even though he had the posture and poise of a confident, desirable man, and a sharp haircut to match, she still knew him as the same person who’d used to mockingly leer at her, who’d terrorized her brother’s friends, who’d beaten Steve into a pulp. That fact would never change, not with a million haircuts or in a million years, and the sight of him swaggering towards one of the chairs, as if he belonged here, had made her grit her teeth together to keep from scoffing aloud.

Recalling what Joyce had said about Billy being newfound friends with Steve, Nancy had turned to him to purposefully pick his brain on the situation, but she’d stopped short at the odd look on his face. He’d had his unblinking eyes glued on Billy, mouth parted in that absentminded way of his, something that only occurred whenever he was lost in thought, and had been watching Billy’s every move as though a ghost had materialized in front of his eyes. Under those sunglasses, she hadn’t been able to tell if Billy was also looking this way or not, that is, until he’d sat down and had very clearly peered in Steve’s direction, eyebrow twitching like he was suppressing it from raising when they’d presumably locked eyes. Steve had immediately snapped out of his trance and had glanced down at his feet, almost guiltily scuffing his shoes into a dry patch of dirt. In turn, Nancy had merely blinked at the situation.

_Does Joyce know what ‘friends’ means?_

While that’d been strange enough, things only got stranger a few minutes later, when Max had loudly gotten Steve’s attention and had initialized a very stilted and awkward chit-chat between him and Billy. Maybe it’d been because Max had put them on the spot, or maybe they just hadn’t been able to speak freely, but, honestly, it hadn’t really seemed to Nancy like they were all that friendly, much less friends. At one point, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from comfortingly touching Steve’s hand; there’d been some unreadable expression on his face as he’d stuttered through his conversation with Billy, although anyone had been able to see how flustered that he’d been. About what, she hadn’t known, and it was probably best if it stayed that way.

But things had settled down after that, what with Steve and Billy resuming their respective conversations. She’d foolishly thought nothing more would come of it, but then she’d returned from fixing her plate of food to find Steve’s seat empty. Which wasn’t odd in itself, but she’d just been up on the deck and in the kitchen, and he certainly hadn’t been there or elsewhere in the house.

“Steve’s not back yet?” She asked Jonathan, looking at the chair between them and then around to see if he’d swapped seats with someone else, but to no avail. He wouldn’t have left without saying anything, so that ruled that explanation out.

Around a bite of macaroni salad, Jonathan shrugged. “Probably getting something inside.”

“I was just inside,” she told him, making him hold her plate for a moment so that she could use both hands to ease herself back into her own seat.

“Oh.” He looked up at the deck and gave another tiny shrug as soon as she’d taken her plate back. “Well, he’s gotta be around here somewhere. Don’t worry about it.”

Nancy subtly glanced at where Billy had been sitting, doing that trick where she additionally scanned a couple of other faces so as not to make specific eye contact with him. But it turned out that her precaution was futile, because Will was sitting where Billy had been and, like Steve’s, Max’s seat was also empty—that is, except for an abandoned plate of food. Now frowning to herself, she concluded that the last time that she’d seen Billy was when she’d last seen Steve; just as Jonathan had said, they’d have to be around here somewhere, but she couldn’t help but hope their dual missing acts were nothing but a coincidence. She wanted Steve to have more friends than just the same ones that he’d kept for over a decade, but a ‘changed’ Billy didn’t deserve to be one of them.

She willed herself to drop the subject for the time being so she could eat and focus on other conversations, but, only a few minutes later, she caught sight of Max exiting through the sliding glass door; lips visibly pursed and chewing on the inside of her mouth, she headed back to her chair and raised her hands at Joyce once they were close enough to hear each other. “Mr. Social Butterfly is off taking a smoking break,” she huffed, still facing Joyce but leaning over to pick up her plate so she didn’t sit on it. “Steve’s with him, too.”

Content with that answer, Joyce nodded gratefully at her before turning back to Karen; Nancy was just about to grab Max’s attention to ask her a few benign questions, but the mention of Steve’s name had also caught Jonathan’s attention, and it’d reignited his earlier frustration to boot. Gripping his plastic spork in a white-knuckled fist, he leaned over the empty seat to get closer to Nancy’s ear. “What the fuck is going on?” He hissed, trying to keep his voice quiet so that his mother didn’t hear him, but it was becoming increasingly higher-pitched as he went along. “Am I missing something? He’s the same asshole from back in high school, except now my mom loves him and Steve’s blowing _us_ off to go hang out with _him_.”

Nancy gently shushed him and looked around, but it didn’t seem like anyone else was paying attention. After Will had taken over Billy’s empty seat, her own mom had taken his vacant place so she could talk with Joyce—knowing them, probably mostly about their impending mutual grandchild. That just left Holly, one seat down from Nancy’s right, but, even if she’d heard, she looked too terminally bored to care. _Teenagers._

“I don’t get it either,” she whispered back. Although that was the god’s honest truth, Jonathan hadn’t seen the mesmerized look on Steve’s face like she had, and that’d created more questions than she knew how to deal with. “But…for some reason, Steve chose to move past the bad blood, so I guess what we think doesn’t really matter. Right?”

“No,” Jonathan said shortly. “Wrong. It does when it involves _Billy Hargrove_.” He enunciated his name like it was the foulest swear word that he could muster. “Nance, this isn’t like if Steve was trying to reconnect with, I don’t know, Tommy and Carol. At least that would make sense, considering they were all chummy before. Don’t you remember what he did to him? To Lucas? To Max?”

“Of course I do,” she said through lightly gritted teeth, willing herself not to snap at him. It’d taken weeks, months even, before the ghastly bruising that Billy had inflicted on Steve’s face had faded away, but the memory of him badly hurt remained.

“Then let’s go out front and get some straight answers,” Jonathan urged. “There has to be something my mom and Steve aren’t telling us. Why now, all these years later?”

He was already shifting his half-empty plate to the side so he could get out of his chair, but Nancy stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Believe me, I want to get to the bottom of this, too,” she said, lightly squeezing her fingers at the junction of his upper back and arm. “I do. But that’s not going to do any good. At best, we embarrass Steve, and, at worst, it turns into some shit show with Billy involved. _Again._ ”

Jonathan gave an annoyed little _humph_ , but she could tell he was running through the same possibility in his head. “Then what are we supposed to do? Just ignore it?”

“Unfortunately, as adults, I think we have to,” she said, hurrying to finish her thought before he decided to go do something anyways. “For the time being, at least. There must be a good reason besides wanting to relive the glory days with someone other than us. I trust Steve’s judgment, even if I don’t agree with it.”

“Like they had a lot of good times together,” Jonathan said sarcastically, but he was already settling back into his seat and shaking his head in surrender. “Ugh. This is just baffling.”

“And you were worried nothing exciting would happen today,” she smiled, popping a mini pretzel into her mouth. It was about an hour-long drive north from Indianapolis to Hawkins, and that’d left plenty of time to speculate about what the day would entail. Neither of them had even come close to guessing something like this. “Looks like you got your wish.”

“Steve hanging out with Billy fucking Hargrove,” Jonathan exhaled, mostly to himself now. “ _Honestly._ ”

“You know, I do find it cute that you’re more concerned with my ex-boyfriend’s well-being than I do.” She kept her voice sardonically casual and winked at him, but he neither saw nor heard it.

“Speak of the devil,” he grumbled, looking past her and frowning, and Nancy turned her head to follow his line of sight, even though she already had a faint idea of what he could be looking at.

And, sure enough, as if on cue, she saw Steve and Billy in the distance, walking next to each other as they came up the side of the house; Billy with one hand in his back pocket and strolling along, Steve with his arms lightly crossed against his chest. They were almost shoulder-to-shoulder and chatting about something—were they looking in her dad’s direction, or was it just her imagination?—and, when Steve broke into a wide smile, it was bizarre to see Billy wolfishly grin back. Nancy watched with a mixture of shock and fascination at how much more comfortable they were in each other’s presence compared to before, and, not for the first time, she wished she could read lips or minds or both. Whatever they were talking about, no matter how innocuous, had to be interesting just based on the fact that they were talking at all.

Next to her, Jonathan made a noise between a scoff and a bewildered laugh, and Nancy didn’t need to look at him to know that he was blatantly staring at the same spectacle that she was.

“Mark my words, they’re secretly dating or something,” he groused, disappointedly shaking his head before turning back to his plate of food; he stabbed his spork into an errant piece of elbow pasta and, in his earnestness, poked the tines through the Styrofoam. “I’m telling you right now, if that’s what’s going on, there’s no way that I’m going to their damn wedding. No way in hell.”

The notion was so absurd that Nancy wanted to laugh, but it died in her throat; she just ran her tongue over her bottom lip and cocked her head at the sight of Steve’s arm brushing Billy’s as they moved ever forward. As sudden and as welcome as a nosebleed—which is to say, not at all—it almost made perfect sense, if in a terrifyingly possible way: he’d never acted this conspicuously interested in anyone else before, certainly not with the seldom partners that he’d had over the years—it’d been a struggle just to get him to introduce his last two relationships of note. But the more she thought about it, the more ridiculous and implausible it sounded. Even if Steve had a tiny crush, there was no way Billy was emotionally capable of being receptive to those feelings. No, they had to be just friends, and, while that was strange enough, it was more palatable than finding out they were dating or, god forbid, _in love_.

“You better hope not,” she cleared her worried thoughts and made herself smile at him, mirroring how Steve was still beaming at Billy for some unknown reason. “Otherwise, that’ll technically make Billy the other godfather.”

The look on Jonathan’s face caused her to burst into laughter. The future godchild in question, as if aware of being the subject of the conversation, rewarded her overt jubilee with a solid kick, and Nancy pressed a hand against it and chose to pretend that it was in solidarity instead of reprimand.

As Billy split away from Steve to sit at an open spot by Hopper and his co-workers, and Steve returned to his own seat as if nothing had happened, the only thing that Nancy could think of was that the next few months were going to be interesting for all four of them. Call it early-onset mother’s intuition, but she just had an unshakable hunch.


	10. Chapter 10

_September 25, 1995_

Steve found out he was pregnant rather unceremoniously.

The end of September found him booked for yet another trip to Chicago, both for a consultation with a prospective client and a quarterly board meeting—more like ‘bored meeting’, also known as the epitome of lame office-related puns—in some high-rise tower on the North Side. Initially, the trip had been limited to Thursday night through Friday afternoon, but, the week prior to leaving, Steve had sought out the A-Okay from his boss-slash-mother to reschedule the return flight for Sunday night. There’d been some concern about unfair special treatment compared to the other traveling employees, and they’d compromised on him taking a vacation day to leave ungodly early on that Monday morning. Really, it was a win-win: the company saved some extra money on a less-than-desirable flight with a seat in economy instead of first class, and Steve got to stick around in Chicago for a little longer. He’d made an excuse of wanting to spend some quality time with Dustin and Suzie and to celebrate the former’s belated birthday (Dustin had just turned twenty-four on the eighth), and, while that was true, the real reason was a need to decompress and to put some distance between him and everything waiting for him back in Hawkins.

On the surface, not much had happened over the month to cause him to need a mini-vacation, but his anxiety had been steadily growing, and it’d hit its peak just a few days before his trip. The exact timing of his heats wasn’t down to a science and could happen any time after a three- to four-week break, but one look at his calendar had revealed that, theoretically, he should be starting his next cycle this very week. Or perhaps not, but he’d been too prepared for the incoming disappointment that he hadn’t even bothered to entertain the _other_ possibility.

Which is why, as he sat in his assigned seat on a plane that was still waiting for takeoff clearance on the tarmac, he was utterly baffled when a very sudden, very crippling wave of nausea struck him. Frowning and swallowing heavily against the rising sensation in the back of his throat, his first instinct was to immediately try to discern why. He’d flown more times in the last year than he could count, and he’d never once been prone to airsickness; plus, there was that funny little detail that they weren’t in motion nor off the ground yet. It wasn’t from inebriation, because he’d had only a glass and a half of red wine at the Hendersons’ less than twelve hours ago. It could be that he was coming down with something, because Dustin had mentioned that he was still getting over a nasty bout of the flu, but reason told Steve that there was no way he could’ve caught a bug so quickly. Admittedly, he’d been slightly queasy when he’d unsuccessfully tried to fall asleep last night, and, thinking back on it, that hadn’t been completely out of the ordinary in the past few days or so, either. It was that time of the year where everyone was getting sick out of the blue. That had to be the reason.

_Right?_

It didn’t hit him until they were in the air, when the roiling sensation finally overcame him. Due to a time crunch, he’d eschewed breakfast in favor of a cup of light-roast coffee before leaving the hotel for the airport, certain that it would be utterly vital to getting through what was essentially a short red-eye; he was unseasonably thankful to his past self’s decision, because that meant that there wasn’t much in terms of stomach contents. But spitting up coffee-flavored bile into a courtesy paper bag was about as much fun as it sounded, and the singular, insidious thought only entered his head only once he’d all but finished retching his guts out.

_What if…_

Just like every day over the past month, he wanted to physically reach into his brain, yank the tiny hopeful goblin out of his head, and squish it between his fingers like a cockroach. _There’s no fucking way it actually happened. It’s just been a busy few days and an even busier weekend. Come on, you’re just…_

But he’d gone too numb to be able to finish that thought, and the sudden rippling of gooseflesh over every inch of exposed skin told another story entirely. He’d already established that he wasn’t a squeamish flyer or hungover, and there was no other explanation unless he really tried to go out of his way to force one. Sure, this very well could be the hallmark of an incoming flu, but he hadn’t had any other symptoms, like a runny nose or a headache or the shivers, and their noticeable absences only strengthened his gut feeling that was telling him it was anything but. And as he stared at his shaking hands, he couldn’t help but think that the simplest answer was always the most correct one.

_…pregnant._

Suddenly, Steve wanted to throw up again, but for an entirely different reason. And he would’ve, if he’d had anything left in his body, so he just settled for dry heaves.

The plane was only half-full—Steve had lucked out and gotten an entire row to himself, something that he was newly even more grateful for—and was mostly compromised of business class passengers on route to New York after their temporary layover in Fort Wayne; with it only being an hour flight, there wouldn’t be any snacks and drinks. Which meant that the flight attendants were keeping to themselves at the front of the plane, and, while Steve was loath to call attention to himself after such an event, he wasn’t about to hold a bag of his vomit for the better part of an hour until they landed; likewise, he had far better manners than to consider setting it on the ground or in the other two empty chairs. So, he reached up and pressed the call button above his head.

When a chirpy young stewardess walked down the aisle to meet him, it didn’t take long for her to hone in on the situation. Steve couldn’t see his own face, but he knew there wasn’t an ounce of blood left, could feel its absence, and he was pretty sure he was close to having a panic attack, but she didn’t know that. Fully.

“You okay, hon?” As if that answer wasn’t already a resounding ‘no’. She clicked her tongue, folded her hands in front of her, and gave him a little sympathetic smile. “Would you like me to get you some ice water?”

Steve’s own tongue was a dried husk, and, still lost in his disbelief, he’d practically forgotten about the lingering acrid taste in his mouth. “That’d be great, thank you,” he croaked, so nervous and so traitorously excited that he felt like he could float through the plane ceiling and ascend to Heaven at any second; being thirty-six thousand feet in the sky boosted that weightless sensation, but, even on solid ground, it wouldn’t have made a difference. His thoughts were white-hot and louder than the hum of fifty airplane cabins, and the only thing that was keeping him temporarily sane was the deep abiding need to get home so he could get actual, tangible confirmation. Only then would he let himself fall apart, not a minute before.

Faster than necessary, the stewardess returned with a black garbage bag, a stack of airline-branded napkins, and a clear plastic cup of water. She dropped the tray of the seat next to Steve so she could temporarily free her hands of everything that wasn’t the bag, which she held out so Steve could place his trash into it. He weakly smiled his thanks when she transferred it to one hand, picked the cup and the napkins back up, and handed them over to him.

“I also brought some extra sick bags, just in case you might need ’em,” she disclosed, taking out two out from where they’d been tucked under her arm and setting them on the extra tray. She waited there until Steve took a much-needed gulp of ice water, feeling the liquid burn as it slid all the way down his raw windpipe. “Rough night?”

He gave a sharp, strangled little laugh, because her feeble attempt at small talk couldn’t have been a more blatant miscalculation of the situation if she’d tried. He briefly imagined telling her the whole story, no holds barred, and had to stop from manically laughing some more when he imagined her potential reaction.

“Uh, yeah,” he lied, nodding to prove his point and immediately regretting doing so when his vision started swimming again. “Yeah, went a little overboard last night. That’s Chicago for you, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t really know,” she said, tying the trash bag shut and leaning an elbow against the back of a frontward passenger’s headrest. “I live in Kansas City, not that I’m there much. But, between you and me, I’ve definitely had to fly through a couple of bad hangovers.” She paused, looking like she was going to say something else, then glanced up at the cockpit as if she just remembered she was on the clock. “Don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything else, okay?”

“Will do,” he managed, using a wafer-thin napkin to wipe at the corners of his mouth and forcing another tight closed smile. “Thanks again.”

She gave him a kind one in return before leaving back to the front of the plane. Almost immediately, Steve wished that she’d stuck around for a little longer, if only to give him an idle alternative to being tortured by his wildly intrusive thoughts. But he didn’t call her back, and he spent the rest of the flight alone, staring out of the tiny squircle window at the horizon, where the azure sky was growing lighter and faintly pinker with each passing minute. The scene was more poignant than words could describe: the beauty of the incoming sunrise intermingling with his exploding hope actualized the most cathartic moment in his twenty-nine years.

By the time the plane had finally landed, his suitcase had been retrieved from the baggage carousel, and he’d returned to his car in the short-term parking lot, the morning sun was peeking over the treetops and bathing everything in shades of gold and peach. Summer had officially ended on Saturday, and, although autumn wasn’t inherently apparent yet, Steve somehow could tell a subtle difference between the dying season that he’d left and the newborn one that he’d come back to. Some imperceptible change had occurred, only seen by those who knew to look for it, and the parallel similarities to his own ongoing saga struck him like a bullet to his already bleeding heart. With the break of a beautiful day reinforcing him anew, he peeled out of the airport and started his trek back to Hawkins only a couple double digits over the speed limit, spurred on both out of unyielding eagerness and a desire to avoid the impending traffic of morning commutes.

He got home in record time—surely some higher power had prevented him from encountering any Highway Patrol, even though he wouldn’t have been above telling the horrible truth to get out of a ticket—and he must’ve looked a sight to his neighbors as he fled the confines of his car and hurried up the staircase of his complex. At his apartment, he flung the key fob over his shoulder to lock his car and, in his haste, almost snapped off his house key in the deadbolt. Once in, he didn’t even bother to remove his shoes or re-lock the front door; he just dropped everything and dashed to his bedroom. It was dark and quiet in there with the windows closed and the blackout curtains drawn, but he didn’t need light to get down on his knees next to his bed, to yank out the infamous plastic bag that he’d shoved under there solely so it’d be extra hidden from sight and mind.

Back in June, when he’d initially bought the first insemination kit from a local medical supply store, he’d also been proactive by getting three pregnancy tests of differing brands—his reasoning was that he wanted to rule out any false positives, but even he knew that that explanation didn’t make his decision any less overzealous. Until this point, he’d resisted using any of them because, one, he couldn’t bear to see the inevitable negative signs, and, two, the regular arrival of his heats had freely done the job for him. But, now, months later, they’d become his one and only focus. He got up from the floor and sat sideways on his bed, and his hands shook as he ruthlessly ripped open one of the more basic tests, sending shredded chunks of cardboard all over the duvet in his haste.

The actual process was easier than the two times he’d tried to inseminate himself, but no less awkward. Luckily, one of the kits had provided a cup not unlike the ones that he’d given Billy, and it was only fitting that it’d come around in circles. He worked steadfastly as he dipped the other two sticks into the unfortunately required fluid, dumped its contents out before throwing the cup away, and literally washed his hands of the whole affair.

And all that was left was to wait for all three to calculate their independent results, which was, quite simply put, fucking impossible. The amount of times that he walked back and forth between his hallway and the bathroom counter almost burned a hole in the carpet, yet he didn’t care how erratic, how possessed he probably looked. He spent some of the agonizing wait by doing things that he should’ve initially done, like taking off his Chelsea boots and going back outside to snatch up his luggage from the car. But he left both the pair and the suitcases sitting haphazardly in the entranceway, only bothering to take out the packed clothes from the latter and throw them into the basin of the washing machine. By that point, he’d shaved off a few minutes, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

So, despite being restless and unable to keep still for even a second, he went to sit on the couch, keeping the shades drawn so that there was minimal glare on the screen from the ever-rising sun. He only managed to catch a few commercials and the beginning segment of a CNN news segment before his impatience won out, _again_ , and he got to his feet and, in a snap, returned to his makeshift laboratory kit.

For the rest of his life, Steve would remember this moment with crystal clarity, as if it were a movie scene recorded in slow motion: one second, he was flipping the lights on and glancing down at the three tests, and the next, he was staring at two sets of clearly defined double lines that’d magically appeared on the little displays. He was just about to go retrieve the instructions to discern their meanings, but then he caught sight of the third test, and it actually made his heart stop for long enough that it should’ve been concerning.

Unlike the other two, which were comprised of flashy blue plastic and deceptively hard to read, this one was simple and opaque and pulled no punches, announcing its result to the world without fanfare. A tiny magenta plus sign quietly greeted him, just strong and clear enough that there was absolutely no ambiguity, and he stared down at it until his vision tunneled, until he was seconds away from going blind. Unless he’d somehow done something wrong, that meant—

_Holy shit._

“Holy shit,” he breathed out, no louder than a whisper, but it felt more like a shout with the roaring in his ears both muffling and amplifying every sound. Grabbing the two indecipherable tests and hauling ass back to his bedroom, his thumb ripped into a page of the instructions when it confirmed the same result as the plus-sign variant. And, upon scanning the other one, it revealed that it was three for three— _a hole-in-one, a grand slam, a home run._

In retrospect, it was dramatic to let everything in his grasp tumble from his slackened hands, but Steve was alone and wholly unconcerned with appearances. Too overwhelmed with shock to do anything else, he dropped to the edge of his bed and sat there numbly, frozen solid, perpetually seconds away from exploding into a million fragments. He’d thought that he’d been inwardly freaking out on the plane, but that paled in comparison to his current emotional state of mind: he’d never felt so _ecstatic_ and _terrified_ in his entire fucking life, adult or not.

After an undisclosed amount of time had passed, Steve went into full-on autopilot mode and made himself get up, his legs shaking as he stood; he was inherently thankful to whatever part of his still-functioning brain had decided to take action, because, otherwise, he probably would’ve sat there for the rest of his life. He moved as if he were in a fog, but it took little effort to strip out of his traveling clothes and replace them with clean loungewear, and an impulse pushed him towards the couch in the living room for some desperately deserved rest, even though he’d just gotten up from a perfectly good bed. It’d suddenly been too overwhelming to stay there, what with the positive tests still strewn all over the covers _and_ it being the location of the event that’d caused those results. It was illogical, but, then again, logic had been thrown out of the window what felt like eons ago.

Truth be told, all he knew was that he wanted to go to sleep _now_ , without delay, for he hadn’t gotten much of it at the hotel last night; he’d been wide awake from feeling ever-so-slightly under the weather— _or_ , as it’d turned out, _not so much_. And with his not-so-little mystery now solved, an influx of a million new emotions and his desire to express all of them at once had suddenly left him utterly exhausted, had taken every ounce of cognitive brainpower with it. He wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ even attempt to gather his thoughts at this stage of the game; everything was happening too fast, and he was still in too much disbelief for it to really hit him yet, much less process the situation.

So, Steve entered the living room, mashed the power button on the television remote, flopped onto the couch, and surrendered himself to the void, if only for a little bit. He slept like a rock for the better part of ten hours, not stirring an inch, dreaming of fleeting images— _tiny hands and tinier toes_ —that he wouldn’t specifically remember later on, although the heartrending emotion would linger well into his waking hours.

It wasn’t dark outside when he finally awoke, but the sun had dropped from the sky to the other edge of the horizon. He rested there, letting his brain come back online and working out that slight nagging feeling of something that he’d yet to remember. All was calm, but only until he’d opened his eyes, because then everything came flooding back in excruciating, teeth-chattering detail. The biggest shock to him was that it hadn’t been a dream, that it wasn’t just a hope any longer: it was real, and it was _happening_.

Steve, still curled up on the couch, cupped a hand to his mouth and blinked several times, eyes blurry both from the lingering effects of deep sleep and the emotion building behind his eye sockets. Just in the last few seconds, the silence had become profoundly unbearable, and he glanced at the VCR to check the time and to sigh a little at the hour. At least it meant that the workday was over for the vast majority, which was a good thing, because that realization gave him the push that he needed to call Robin; she was the only person in the world that he desperately wanted to hear from right now. In fact, she was the only person that he wanted to entrust with this life-altering secret (Heather included, but that was just a given), and, while a large part of him wanted it to be Billy, he just couldn’t, not yet, at least. He told himself that there would be plenty of time to handle that tricky aspect, and revealing it over the phone would be the absolute worst way to go about it. With Robin, he had no other immediate choice unless he wanted to write a weird letter or send a primitive email from work, so her case had to be the exception, not the rule.

He propped himself up on an elbow and reached over the end table to snatch the cordless phone off its base, then dialed Robin’s number without even needing to look at the buttons. As he waited to hear her voice, he couldn’t tell if his stomach was flipping from nerves or something else entirely, but the line connecting kicked those introverted thoughts to the curb. From there, he wasted no time, because he was getting closer to the brink with each passing second that nobody else shared in his madness.

“Robin.”

“Steve!” She exclaimed, ever glad to hear from him. Her elation didn’t assuage his mood, just made him wish she were here with him more than ever. “What’s up? You didn’t return my call on Friday.”

Lying on his back against the couch cushions, he involuntarily rolled his eyes, but he was temporarily glad for the futile distraction. “I was in Chicago. Didn’t I tell you that before I left so you wouldn’t call?”

“Uh…I don’t remember.” Robin leaned away from the phone and called something to Heather, and Steve heard her familiar high-pitched voice faintly in the background. Robin’s own voice came back in full force a beat later. “Oh, shit, that’s right. I thought you said next weekend, and I even wrote it down in my organizer. Whoops. God, I’m only twenty-seven, and I feel like my brain’s already going to shit. So, what’d ya do there?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said impatiently. He’d reached his limit for anything not related to _this_ , and the housing of the portable phone was creaking from the relentless pressure of his grip. “Robin, you’ve got to help me out here. I’m losing my fucking mind.”

“What? Why?” And then, actually serious, “Are you okay?”

Steve’s laugh came out more like a choke than anything else. “No. Yes. Both. Neither.”

There was some rustling on the other side that Steve couldn’t decipher, but it sounded like Robin was moving around her apartment. “Hang on, hang on,” she murmured, and he pictured her going into her bedroom to give him privacy for their conversation. He still expected it to make its way back to Heather, probably Mara, too, but he nonetheless appreciated her efforts. “What’s going on?”

“I think I’m…” The air involuntarily whooshed out of his lungs before he could manage to say it, his mouth still opened to form the rest of the sentence. His heart was beating so hard that it was threatening to evacuate his chest cavity, but he just swallowed—with difficulty, because there wasn’t a drop of moisture left in his mouth—and let the words fall from his lips for the very first time. “I’m pregnant.”

Robin’s end was silent for only a millisecond before a deafening clatter burst directly into his ear canal. With a quick intake of breath, he pulled his receiver away from his face, and he was glad he waited to replace it, because her next words were just as piercing as the crash.

“ _Think?_ ” Her tinny voice repeated, screeching like a hawk. “ _Pregnant?_ ”

“Know,” Steve steadily amended, putting the phone back to his ear for a brief second so he could respond. “I know I am.”

“Heather, get the fuck over here!” Robin shouted, not bothering to pull her own phone away and consequently yelling into Steve’s ear again. Nothing, not even the clipped, compressed phone call quality, could diminish her obvious delight. “Oh my fuck—I’m putting you on speaker—Steven, what _the_ —how long have you known?!”

“Literally just found out today. Hours ago. You’re the only one who knows. Well, you and now Heather.”

“Ooh!” As if on cue, that was Heather, and her voice came out just slightly more muted than Robin’s, meaning that she was either sitting further away from the speakerphone or still in the process of moving closer to it. “It happened? Wow!”

“Oh, oh my god,” Robin babbled. “You did it. You actually did it.”

“Yeah. I did it.” His responding chuckle was feeble, slightly teary, and he was too overjoyed from her happiness to feel even a shred of shame. It still didn’t feel real, and maybe it would stay that way as long as things didn’t change much over the next month or two, which was a terrifying thought in itself. Hopefully, he would find a way to compartmentalize before that happened.

“I knew you would! Didn’t we say not to give up?” She enthused, and her victorious fist pump didn’t need auditory clues to prove its existence. He could see it.

“As always, you’re right again.” He shifted over onto his side, and the motion caused his smile to drop as quickly as it’d appeared. With a sigh, he mumbled, “I don’t—holy shit, Robin, what am I gonna do?”

“What do you—oh.” As abrupt as a light switch, Robin went deathly quiet and just as unnaturally calm. For Steve, hearing her go from jubilant to serious was deeply sobering. “Steven, I need you to know that I’m here for you if you’ve changed your mind. I mean it. It’s your body, your choice.”

There was another kind of lump in Steve’s throat, one that hadn’t been there before, and he hurried to clarify himself. “No, no,” he said quickly, because, as scared as he was, this was still a very much wanted pregnancy. But if it weren’t, he would’ve deeply appreciated hearing those supportive words more than he already did. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that I feel like I’m going to have a fucking heart attack or throw up again or both. I can’t believe it fucking _worked_.” And then, muttering not entirely to himself, “He was right.”

Steve knew that he’d fucked up as soon as the words left his lips, and he was already kicking himself for not being more careful before Robin had even said anything in return. Of course, it didn’t take her long, because Robin was as sharp as a tack and just as perceptive as he’d given her credit for.

“He what? What worked?” She asked suspiciously, truly a dog with a bone, and Steve palmed a hand over his face. _Good fucking going, idiot._ Of the few people that knew about his involvement with Billy over the past few months, Robin knew the most, and that’d been on purpose, but there were some things—at the top of that list, the exact manner and method of conception—that he’d intended on keeping completely secret from everyone, even her, full stop. But he’d always been terrible at keeping secrets, and this slip was no exception; it just really took the loose-lipped cake. “Don’t worry about it,” he tried, but it was an entirely fruitless pursuit, and even Heather probably knew it. “Forget it.”

“Nice try,” Robin snarked. “But that cat’s not going back in the bag. Not after you spilling the beans about what’s literally the biggest development of your life. Trust me, nothing else you can say can top that.”

Steve quirked an eyebrow. _You wanna bet?_ And, suddenly, divulging this particular secret didn’t seem so distasteful if it meant proving her wrong. So, he affected the most casual voice he could muster and said, “I had sex with Billy.”

Robin was infamously unflappable or, at least, very hard to catch completely off-kilter; so, when she made a sound like a cat being stepped on, Steve literally had to bite his tongue from laughing at her expense.

Heather cut in on her behalf. “Give Robin a second,” she told him, and he could hear the barely constrained mirth in her voice as well. “Her jaw’s on the floor.”

“Hey, I did tell her to forget it.” Steve pinched at his Cupid’s bow with his thumb and forefinger and tried to suppress a grin with little success.

“I stand corrected,” Robin finally choked out, sounding dazed and confused. “What in the _hell_ has gotten into you these last few months? I’ve gotta admit, I was secretly glad when you expressed interest in asking Billy to donate, but, here you are, straight up _fucking_ him and now having his _baby_? My god, I’ve never been so proud of you before.”

Humor evaporating, Steve’s eyes went impossibly wide. “No, no, it’s not his,” he clarified hastily, and then he realized that that wasn’t what he meant, either. “I mean, technically, _biologically_ it is, but we’re not _together_ just because we had sex that one time.”

Robin made a sound of complaint. “I’m so fucking lost. Last I checked, you were using the baster method—why did you have sex?”

Steve shrugged, even though she couldn’t see it, because he still wondered the same thing himself. “He offered.”

Outraged now, Robin retorted, “Okay, is there something in the water there that I don’t know about? Do I need to buy a plane ticket just so I can get to the bottom of this?”

“Alright, alright,” he flung a hand up, despite her not being able to see that, either. “Just let me explain.”

And he did, taking care to sanitize enough of the details—for example, Billy’s initial proposition—so his synopsis wouldn’t sound like some off-kilter porno. Heather listened intently without making a sound, and, while Robin made exclaimed noises after a few choice words of his tale, she refrained from saying anything until he’d finished, and then she cleared her throat in a way that was nothing short of mischievous. “Just answer me one thing.”

Steve reared his head back against the seat of the couch. He didn’t know what it said about their friendship that he could read her mind just from her tone, nevertheless over the phone and several states away. “Oh god, if it’s about—”

“It absolutely is,” she interrupted fiercely, proudly. “So, how was it?”

A question like that should’ve been too vague to decipher, and he wished that he had the privilege of playing dumb at first—but, coming from her, there was absolutely no other way to interpret what ‘it’ meant. Heather did, too, and she groaned to prove it; still, she didn’t say anything to stop Robin’s endless pursuit of knowledge, probably because she was just as curious but didn’t know how to ask. Luckily, Robin shamelessly had that covered, and, on the flipside, Heather had the perpetual ability to exert tact when Robin frequently didn’t. They truly were the perfect team.

“He got me pregnant,” Steve scoffed. “How do _you_ think it was?”

“That good, huh?”

He was this far in, might as well treat it like some kind of impromptu confession, one that, instead of taking place in some stuffy box with an uninterested priest, was on his couch and over the phone with a tag team of New York-based girlfriends that cared more about his personal life than his own parents did—which was the definition of an upgrade, should anyone ask. “Better,” he admitted, and he bit the inside of his lip when he realized he meant it, and that the only thing he was embarrassed about was that he wasn’t embarrassed to admit it. He didn’t really know the extent of the sex work that Billy had done back in the day, but he knew firsthand that Billy _clearly_ had had plenty of invaluable experience. “But if you tell _anyone_ I said that, or about us having sex, I won’t make you the godmother,” he said firmly, tone brooking no arguments. “So, watch it.”

“Hey, give me a little credit here. I wouldn’t dream of it.” Robin had the decency to sound affronted, and he took that as good as a promise. “So, when are you gonna tell everyone else? No, wait, scratch that—when are you gonna tell _him_?”

Steve pointedly ignored his resurging flutter of nerves at the thought of how Billy was going to handle it, now that it wasn’t just a hypothetical between them any longer. “Not until I’m past the first trimester—god, I can’t fucking believe this is happening,” he said lowly, shaking his head against the cushions and running a hand through his hair. “In hindsight, I probably should’ve waited until then to tell you guys, too.”

“Fuck that!” Robin exclaimed, and even Heather gave a little, “Yeah!” just to show she was in complete agreement, two-against-one style. “I would’ve been so pissed with you if you chose to withhold on us like that.”

“It’s not personal, it’s precautionary,” he mumbled, now placing his cracked bottom lip between his teeth. “Y’know, because of the potential for early miscarriages.”

A temporary hush fell over both lines as the three of them digested Steve’s words.

“You’re not gonna miscarry, Steve,” Heather said very seriously, obviously emboldened by Robin’s outburst to make one of her own. “I promise. We were right the first time, yes?”

“Yeah, you were,” he admitted, silently praying that they would be as correct as ever. _Sapphic witches, plural…_ “God only knows how or why, but you were. Anyways, as for the second question, ’cause I know you’re both still dying to know, I got no clue. Like, what’s the etiquette on this? I would’ve told him first if we were actually dating, but he’s certainly _not_ my boyfriend. I don’t know if we’re even technically _friends_ at this point.”

Robin hummed a little. “He could be. Your boyfriend, I mean.”

“Nice try,” he snarked. “I’m thinking it might be easier if I just keep it a secret until he leaves. For his sake.”

Someone, maybe them both, inhaled sharply, as if they’d just heard Steve express his covert plan to murder Billy or something equally dumbfounding. “Wow, that’s literally the worst fucking idea you’ve ever had,” Robin remarked dryly, once the air cleared. “Good going.”

“Fine, you got any ideas, Little Miss Know-It-All?”

“All of mine just involve going to his house and having celebratory unprotected sex. _Again_ , apparently,” she corrected, and he could hear her smirk through the receiver. “Heather, you know Billy.”

Steve heard her give a muted snort. “Yeah, like, ten years ago. Does that even count after that much time has passed?”

“Knew him, then, whatever,” Robin sighed, playfully aggrieved. “Semantics aside, what do you think Steve should do?”

Heather was silent for a beat as she pondered that thought, and Steve waited for her sage advice. Even though he’d just recently had literal sex with the man, he still defaulted to her admittedly outdated judgment. They were close, once upon a time, and it had to count for something. “Billy didn’t like secrets or being purposefully left out of the loop,” she said carefully, sounding like she was chewing on the inside of her mouth as she spoke. “He’s a very direct person, definitely to a confrontational level. Am I still right?”

It might’ve been ten years, but some things never change, and Billy’s intense, authoritative quirks were a glaringly prime example. “Yeah,” he huffed out a laugh. “That’s him.”

“I think the best thing you could do is to rip the Band-Aid off now,” Heather continued, tone even and serious where Robin’s could often border on sarcastic indifference without really meaning to. “Or, at worst, maybe in a few weeks, but definitely sooner rather than later. Ultimately, it’s your choice…but, like you said, it’s not going to be _his_ kid, but it’s _his_ nonetheless. He deserves to hear it from you, now, not someone else down the line.”

At those fourteen words, Steve sighed in defeat. “Shit, you’re right.” Still lying down, his head sagged to the crook of his shoulder, suddenly too heavy to hold it upright even if he’d wanted to. That answer was exactly what he’d feared, exactly what he hadn’t wanted, but hearing it come out of someone else’s mouth solidified it as the only option. Still, that didn’t mean he was looking forward to it. “God, why aren’t you two therapists or life coaches or something?”

“Be glad that we aren’t, ’cause you couldn’t afford us,” Robin piped up.

That gave Steve an idea, and he proposed it without a shred of sarcasm or humor. “Listen, I will literally pay for both of your plane tickets if you come here and find a way to tell him for me. I mean it. First class.”

Heather giggled, but Robin straight up cackled. “Are you kidding? I’ll be on a plane within the hour.” But then, she went uncharacteristically serious. “As much as I’d like to, this is up to you. It’s your baby, Steve.”

And, somehow, that hit harder than anything else that’d been thought or said in the past twelve or so hours, and Steve again felt the air involuntarily leave his lungs like he’d been sucker-punched. But the funny thing was that he didn’t even mind it, because it wasn’t often that he got such good news that it literally took his breath away. Although it was entirely too early to do such a thing, he tentatively slid his free hand down his side and over to the spot directly above his belly button. It was purely symbolic, because whatever he was looking for was minuscule and would be for quite some time, but he nonetheless focused on the concept of some little spark somewhere inside. He took a minute to regain his breathing, still secretly resting his hand there and merely feeling his abdomen move up and down with each diaphragmatic breath. Robin, who seemed to understand his silence, graciously gave him time.

“Er, yeah. It is my baby,” he spoke softly, as if quoting some verse of a particularly moving poem, relishing those saccharine words. “Never said that aloud before. Wow.”

“Okay, Heather,” Robin said, cutting through his foggy thoughts. She sounded far away, but Steve didn’t know how much of that was from the blood rushing in his ears or if she was leaning away from the speaker again. “We’ve got to give a head’s up to our neighbors for the next few months. I’m telling you now, I’m seriously gonna lose my shit every time we talk to him.”

Heather blew out a pained sigh. “Steve,” she began, and she sounded simultaneously sarcastic and disgruntled. “Congratulations, but also thanks a whole damn lot, because now she’s gonna drive me, our roommate, and some innocent people on our apartment floor crazy for the rest of time immemorial. Mostly me, but, still, _thanks_.”

“Sorry,” he bit his lip but let the smile leak into his voice.

“Don’t apologize!” Robin called, now in the background, but still loud enough that he could tell she was already well on her way to infuriating her immediate neighbors. “You’re having a _baby_!”

“Again, Heather, sorry,” he started to laugh freely, feeling like a million tons had just been lifted from his shoulders in one fell swoop. With his fingers still splayed over that plane of skin, still flat for now, his heart had never felt so full. _I’m having a baby._


	11. Chapter 11

_September 29, 1995_

Quarter past six o’clock on a Friday evening, Hopper had only stepped a foot in the house when the phone rang.

“My hands are wet, can you get that?” Joyce immediately called from the kitchen, because, at some point in the past decade or so, their relationship had surpassed lovingly greeting each other at the door after a long day at work.

“Hello to you, too,” Hopper grumbled, but without heat. He stomped over to the couch-adjacent side table and picked the corded phone up, barking into it before he’d even held it up to his face. “Y’ello?”

“Hey, Hop,” came the other voice, and it took him more than a few seconds to recognize it. He swore, not for the first time, that telephone callers were getting trickier and trickier to distinguish as he got older. Joyce liked to admonish him whenever he blamed his shortcomings on his age—like getting grouchier or losing his tentative grasp on technology, because half of the shit that Mike tried to explain to him about computers flew right over his damn head—by calling it his favorite excuse and then some, but, still, nobody could tell him that it wasn’t mired in a little truth, least of all her.

“Steve,” he greeted, grumpy mood evaporating for the time being. The kid was a busy bee and didn’t call frequently, especially not to chat, so this had to be something of considerable importance. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“It’s not a—” Steve began, and then he audibly switched tactics. “I was just about to try your office, but I figured you were home already. Am I interrupting dinner or something?”

“Nah, I just got here,” Hopper removed his non-issued windbreaker as he spoke. Tomorrow was the last day of September, and, while it wasn’t cool enough yet to have to bust out anything more than an extra layer, it wasn’t as warm as it’d once been, either, especially so when the sun started to go down. He couldn’t hang it up in the coat closet with the too-short phone cord restricting him, so he threw it sideways onto the back of the plaid couch. “What’s up?”

“D’you know…uh, is Billy working tonight?”

Hopper cocked his head and squinted. With how much the two boys had been hanging out over the past few months, he was of the opinion that Billy at least shared his schedule with him, but apparently not. “Yeah, he was just getting there when I left. That boy loves those night shifts, I can’t explain it. I’d be a damn zombie. Joyce would have to shoot me on sight.”

“Okay,” Steve said cryptically, not even bothering to laugh politely at his attempted joke. He paused for a second before saying, “Good,” and Hopper wasn’t entirely sure if he was talking to him or telling himself.

Joyce came out of the kitchen, a pale-yellow towel in hand, and mouthed, ‘Billy?’ at him. Hopper shook his head at her and readjusted his grip on the phone. “I know his work number, d’you want it? Or for me to give him a head’s up about something?”

“No, no,” Steve said far too quickly, not succeeding at sounding as casual as he’d probably intended; his tone strung too tightly for how ordinary his words were. Age notwithstanding, Hopper’s instincts were as sharp as ever, and he picked up on the discrepancy right away. “I just wanted to make sure he was there for one of those long shifts before I, well, I was thinking about bringing him dinner?”

“That’d be awfully kind of you,” he hummed, and Joyce crowded in to hear the conversation secondhand. They didn’t get many regular calls that didn’t come from their kids, and Hopper’s unusual answers had piqued her interest. “But I think he eats beforehand. I will say though, if you want to see him cry tears of joy, bring him some coffee. Our machine’s been on the fritz for a few weeks, finally kicked the bucket this afternoon, and Flo isn’t going out to Sears to look at new models until Monday or Tuesday.”

“Perfect,” Steve breathed, sounding only temporarily relieved. “I can do that. Thanks, Hop.”

“Don’t mention it, kid,” Hopper quirked a corner of his mouth at Joyce, who now had her eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “Tell him I said to take it easy, will ya? He doesn’t listen to me, but he’ll probably listen to you.”

Steve snorted. “Have you met him? He does what he wants.”

“True, but it’s still worth a shot.”

They exchanged pleasant goodbyes (“Tell Joyce I said hi,”) and hung up their respective phones (“Joyce, Steve says hi,”) immediately after, and Hopper didn’t waste a second telling her all about that unusual little chat.

“That’s nice of him,” she said once Hopper had finished condensing it down and had thrown in a few quips about his own workday at a glance. “I’m sure Billy will appreciate it.”

“I’m sure,” Hopper repeated, opening his mouth to say something else, but he thought better of it and decided to trail into the kitchen instead. Joyce followed behind him and, although he couldn’t see it, shared in having the same look on her face.

They were both thinking the same thing, and it was just a question of when, not if, they’d get around to addressing their suspicions in a rational way.

“So,” she said after a minute, now back at the stove and stirring the chicken soup that was reheating on the burner—she’d made it in bulk on Wednesday night, and, with how much she’d frozen in Mason jars, there was surely enough to tide them over intermittently until Halloween—as Hopper set the table for dinner. “Who’s gonna say it first?”

He didn’t need to look at her to guess. “What, that there’s something more going on with Billy and Steve that we don’t know about? You first.”

Joyce huffed out a laugh and tapped the spoon on the inside of the pot before setting it on the counter. “Okay, there’s something more going on with Billy and Steve. Not that it’s any of our business, of course.”

“Oh, please,” Hopper chortled, setting silverware and some take-out napkins on two placemats on opposite ends of the table, so that they could face each other directly as they ate. “It might as well be, all things considered. I’m sure you could call Max up right now, and she’d have some beans to spill. The real question is if she would—eh, maybe for the right price.”

“Well, whatever they’re doing, I’m happy for them,” Joyce declared. “It’s tough finding friends right around their own ages. Sure, Steve’s got Jon and Nancy, but they don’t live nearby. And, as far as I know, Billy doesn’t have any.”

“Hey, the other deputies at the station aren’t that much older,” Hopper ticked off a mental checklist as he went along. “Not Callahan or Powell, they’re closer to my age, but Cooper’s, what, only three years older? Tracey and Jones are somewhere around his age, too. I think.”

“ _Mm_ , those are work friends.” She came up to the table and picked up the two white bowls that he’d only just laid out. “Which is all fine and well, but everyone needs someone to hang out with outside of professional obligation.”

Hopper held a hand to his heart and gave her a look of mock insult, winking when her face rumpled up at him. “What does that make us to him? I’m his boss, albeit temporarily, am I just a ‘professional obligation’, too?”

“Define ‘professional’,” she laughed, and she turned on her heel to go dip up the now-steaming soup.

Hopper watched her work, still thinking about Steve currently going out of his way to get Billy a pick-me-up as a consolation prize for attempting a caffeine-free graveyard shift. He tried to imagine Billy’s reaction or, at least, what he’d say when Steve showed up, but he came up empty; Billy was a very taciturn and often-intimidating figure, and that made him not very easy to read, but Hopper knew that he would be undoubtedly grateful, even if he had difficulty expressing that aloud. By now, Steve had to have spent enough time with him that he would surely understand that, so Hopper didn’t worry about him not being able to decode Billy’s art of saying things without actually saying them. They would be fine.

“Y’know,” he said casually, trying to recount the last time that he’d gotten a surprise like that on an extra-long, extra-undesirable shift. “You don’t bring me coffee.”

“That’s right, because you can make your own.” Joyce still had her back to him, draining some of the broth from his bowl so that he got more noodles and hunks of chicken and carrots than not, but she turned to look at him over her shoulder. “But I make you dinner, unless you want to start doing that, too.”

“Alright, fair point,” he grinned, coming up behind her to take his filled bowl in one hand and to swat her on the backside with the other. “I think I’ll manage.”

* * *

Even though Hopper side-eyed him every time he pointed it out, Billy liked the night shift. Few people knew this about him—hell, maybe even Max would be surprised at the extent—but he was more of an introvert than he gave off, and his on-call career in the emergency services, purely based on interacting with the public, didn’t exactly leave him with many opportunities to recharge his batteries. He used to call it the worst aspect of the job, the fact that it never really ended, but some unfortunate, unseen circumstances had been more than enough to make him re-evaluate his opinion on that.

Nevertheless, it didn’t change the fact that day-to-day operations could frequently be unbearable. What did his old captain say to him after one particularly bad shift— _stupidity and craziness is directly proportional to loudness and rowdiness?_ It wasn’t verbatim, and Billy couldn’t remember what else he’d said—that had been a very bad day, not ‘getting shot’-bad, but close—but the point was that it’d been proven true time and time again, no matter where he went. Hawkins might be boring on the surface, but, somehow, there was always something going on, and Billy’s own mantra of ‘same shit, different city’ evidently held water.

So, night shifts were the best of both worlds: he got to do his job, which he really did love (despite the prevalent annoyances and nasty hidden dangers), all without civilians (except for the occasional drifter) popping in to bother him or having to field the hustle and bustle of a daytime precinct. Nights in Hawkins were quiet, dark, and unpopulated, three things that certainly didn’t apply to Los Angeles. But those elements were the perfect cocktail for making it feel eerie, too, especially when he went outside to take a mid-shift smoke break—he allowed himself one or two on most nights, because it gave him something to look forward to besides just waiting for the sun to rise—and everything was still and unassuming. Billy always got the feeling that there was something watching him just out of his line of sight, most notably from the ever-present edge of the thick forest that surrounded the entirety of Hawkins; he chalked it up to being too used to a cutthroat coastal city instead of a sleepy Midwestern hamlet, but that didn’t make being all alone at the witching hour any less hair-raising. Needless to say, even with a gun, he didn’t like lingering outside longer than he had to.

Tonight’s shift started as usual as ever: once he got settled in, he prepared himself for a long night of holding down the fort and filling out a hefty stack of reports, which would need even more tedious filing upon completion, and those tasks in conjunction would leave his brain mushy oatmeal by daylight. And, as soon as the last of his coworkers had trickled out of the precinct and had expressed their sympathies through their smirks, he cracked his knuckles and got down to business. It was monotonous work, but he switched his brain off and quickly found a rhythm, eventually turning it into some sort of pseudo-meditation. He’d only been at it for about half an hour when the entry alert chime of the front glass doors went off, and he leaned back from his papers in a snap, tiny black type still swimming in his vision. It was still too early for the janitors, who typically came through a locked door out back, so that had to mean some offhand civilian was here to ruin his night with something stupid. _Just my luck_ , he inwardly grumbled, getting out of his swivel desk chair and rolling his stiff neck. _Game time, goddammit._

So, Billy schooled his grimacing face into something vaguely professional and stepped out into the main hallway, his mouth already parted to question the incomer. A silent breath of relief came out instead, and his shoulders involuntarily sagged at the not unwelcome sight of Steve standing there in the lobby, posture so rigid and expression so nervous that it looked like he was actually here to confess a crime. In hindsight, Billy should’ve found that odd, maybe more so than the reason that Steve was here in the first place, but he’d honed in on the molded fiber drink carrier in his grip, and, suddenly, nothing else mattered in the entire universe, especially not logic.

“Hey,” Steve dipped his head as Billy approached him with unhurried steps. He was trying to hide it through his eyelashes, but Billy saw Steve’s eyes give him an unsubtle once-over; if he had to hazard a guess, it had something to do with Steve never seeing him in uniform before—he often garnered the same reaction from other people, regardless if they knew him back then or not. Perhaps that was the reason Steve’s feet were still stuck to that one spot in the center of the lobby, because it was almost as if he were afraid moving a step further would risk reprimand. “Uh, Hop said you’d be working tonight.”

Billy nodded, although his eyes remained glued on the two coffee cups in the carrier, each branded with the logo of a local gas station. Powell, that bastard, had single-handedly broken the department coffee machine earlier today, and Billy had _almost_ come to terms with the fact that he’d have to forcibly eschew caffeine tonight. But angels sometimes pulled through, and, today, that angel was none other than Steve Harrington. “That for me?”

Steve’s abnormally worried eyes flitted from Billy’s face down to the carrier in his own hand, and he blinked at it like he’d forgotten it was there. “Oh, um, yeah. Figured you could use it.”

Billy didn’t mean this lightly, but he’d never wanted to kiss Steve so badly before. The impulse was so frighteningly strong that it made his fingers twitch at his sides, and he had to physically stop himself from reaching out to take Steve’s baby face in his grasp and yanking it inwards to meet his own. Whatever the case, it passed as quickly as it’d come, and he coolly played off his (almost) momentary lapse in judgment by convincing himself that he was just overwhelmed with gratitude, that’s all. It didn’t actually mean anything, nor would he have actually have done it.

_…Right?_

“You’re a damn lifesaver,” Billy groaned, coming up closer to Steve and reaching out for one of the blessed cups awaiting him there. He’d initially figured that his choice didn’t matter, that they were identical blends, but he’d no sooner placed his fingertips on one plastic black lid when Steve slapped his free palm on top of that seemingly specific drink.

“Not that one,” he said in a rush, beating out Billy’s remark. “It’s decaf.”

Sneering, Billy snatched up the other cup, immediately luxuriating in the warmth radiating through the little cardboard sleeve meant to buffer it. He instantly wanted to down its boiling contents, right here and right now, but he did have a lot to do tonight, and he didn’t really need to add ‘get second- to third-degree burns’ to that list. So, he kept the drink at chest level and busied himself with ribbing Steve. “What, too chicken to stay up all night like me?”

Steve mirrored him by robotically taking his own coffee cup in hand, letting the one holding the carrier drop to his side. Without warning, Billy reached over to yank it out of his lax grip and tossed it on top of the reception counter; either he or someone else, maybe Florence, would throw it away later on. Startled, Steve blinked between him and where it’d landed on the counter, but then he looked to the side, taking the opportunity now to clasp both hands around his cup. “Something like that,” he murmured, and was it Billy’s imagination, or was Steve’s throat bobbing more than usual?

They stood there for an odd moment, with Billy watching Steve look literally anywhere else but at him, and it only ended with Billy glancing up at the analog clock on the wall. It was technically too early to take a real break, but, fuck it: his concentration was already broken, he had a fresh cup of lifeblood, and his pack of cigarettes was burning a hole in his uniform breast pocket. In light of having some decent company for once, he figured that he might as well completely indulge.

“It’s not that bad out there,” he began, drawing forth Steve’s owlish attention from what he was pretending to be fixated on. “You got anywhere else to be?”

“N-no,” Steve emphatically shook his head to prove his point, sending aftershocks through his willowy body. Thanks to his vigor, his cup’s vented opening almost sloshed liquid onto his canvas shoes. “No, that’s fine. Let’s go out.”

Billy gave him a little look, very close to asking him what his damage was tonight, but he settled on moving past and opening one of the heavy glass doors instead. Once there, he propped it open for Steve with a raised arm and his fingers splayed out on the glass, frowning up at the door sensor that sent another shrill chirp echoing through the building. Steve had to duck under his arm just to get through it, because he was taller and couldn’t help but keep unintentionally showing that off, and Billy waited until Steve was all the way through before he removed his hand, exited through himself, and strolled along the sidewalk towards his usual spot without hesitation. Behind them, the spring at the top of the doorframe drifted closed at a snail’s pace, and, by the time that it’d actually shut, Billy had already parked himself on the edge of a curb, right in front of an empty parking place designated specifically for Hopper’s truck.

Sitting here was completely normal to him at this point, but one look up at Steve, who was still standing just off to his side, made him realize with a huff that he had probably intended on sitting on the perfectly good bench in front of the precinct wall. Billy knew that this was a prime example of something that made no sense to anyone but him, that Steve couldn’t know that he liked to sit directly under that streetlamp just because it kept the metaphorical demons at bay when it was pitch-black out. Currently, it was still twilight, but the daylight was increasingly disappearing with each passing second, and the artificial light’s time would literally come to shine soon enough.

Besides, benches were for wimps.

Even though Billy knew he wanted to, Steve didn’t say anything. He merely placed his coffee cup on the ground next to Billy’s hip, pulled at the taut fabric of the knees of his jeans, and joined him in sitting on the rock-hard curb. During that process, Billy had finally chanced a sip from his own cup and had instantly regretted it; as Steve settled in and rested his arms on his knees, Billy ran his scalded tongue over the back of his teeth like a dog licking its wounds, and he was comfortable with keeping the silence linger between them. The streetlamp above had started to flicker on, the open air was just teetering on brisk, and, while cars still frequented the road at this hour, there wasn’t anyone else besides them out here; it was a calm, early autumn dusk that didn’t require idle chatter, perhaps even benefited from its absence. While Billy hadn’t planned to be the one to break it, he still remembered his sole reason for coming out here in the first place, so he cleared his throat to ease them into a conversation that he didn’t feel like having.

“Smoke?” It was a rhetorical question, because he was already digging a hand into his breast pocket for the carton. He hadn’t had anything to occupy his fingers after setting his burning coffee down next to Steve’s, and he greatly relished the opportunity to remedy that.

Steve, looking uneasy, paused for entirely too long. “No,” he said hoarsely, fingers digging into the sides of his pant legs. “Can’t.”

Billy loudly snorted at him. They’d played this dumb little game back at Hopper and Joyce’s house, and Steve had given in then just as he surely would now. Pragmatically, he should prefer Steve’s denial so that he didn’t have to share half a smoke or give one away, but Billy had always hated smoking alone while in the close vicinity of others who didn’t. It just made him feel that much guiltier that he had no damn willpower over his nicotine addiction, something he’d maintained for half of his life, and it didn’t sting nearly as much when he was in the company of someone else as ultimately powerless as him. Which sounded as pathetic as it actually was, but, in these moments, he didn’t care—he just wanted to smoke.

Deliberately ignoring the queer look on Steve’s face, he drew one out from his shirt pocket with his index finger and thumb. And, for good measure, he wasted no time by waving it enticingly in Steve’s direction. “Just one cigarette’s not going to single-handedly kill you, come on.”

Apparently, that had been the wrong thing to say, because Steve sucked in a wet, broken breath and turned on the curb to look at Billy squarely in the face. In response, Billy slowly met his eyes with a sideways glance, now gripping the contentious cigarette like a kid that had just been caught stealing. He’d pretty much expected Steve to defeatedly give in or, at worst, become cross over his inability to take no for an answer, but he certainly hadn’t anticipated to see raw emotion there in those big brown eyes, flowing like molten chocolate. “I _can’t_.”

Billy had many strengths in life—intimidation was one of them, fixing up vintage cars was another, and sex had to be up there, somewhere—and, while he knew he wasn’t going to win any awards for intelligence, he wasn’t _stupid_. Back in school, whenever he’d been bothered to put forth effort, it’d consistently made teachers in California and Indiana alike go from disapproving to surprisingly receptive. He’d always received compliments on both his penmanship and writing, two talents that’d always come naturally to him, but ones that he’d also squandered because he hadn’t seen the point in showing them off. As for the rest of his school experience, regardless of whether he might’ve been capable of much more (and he had been), his only goal at that time in his life was to do just enough to prevent some do-gooding tattletale teacher from calling home and unknowingly causing his dad to knock his teeth in. And that system had worked out well enough in high school, but he’d learned early on that real life didn’t work that way—out here, playing stupid just made things worse in the long run.

Which is why, when those same relative smarts kicked in, when he realized Steve’s hidden meaning with painful clarity, he didn’t suppress the truth; he just wished to god that he could live in ignorance instead, although that was a fruitless plea that always fell on deaf ears.

The air had suddenly grown as cold as the ice in his veins, and his heart had started thudding in his chest the minute that Steve had looked at him, picking up speed with each furious thump. “You’re—”

“Pregnant,” Steve confirmed quietly, and the word stuck around like a fume of smoke that wasn’t really there. He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t frowning, either, mostly too concerned with drinking in Billy’s shell-shocked expression; in return, Billy was too busy feeling like combusting into a million shards of human-shaped shrapnel as every synapse in his brain went off like grenades. He suddenly got the mental image of a lightning bolt shooting southbound out of the wide sky, hurtling upon a small, empty parking lot in an even smaller town, ultimately striking one specific spot on a sidewalk where some sandy-haired cop was sitting there like a bump on a log. As much as he wished that it would actually happen, the fates apparently weren’t that merciful, because they were apparently just too busy making sure Steve got—

_Shit._

Billy’s little, “Oh,” came of its own volition, and he wasn’t even aware that he’d spoken for a good second. Initially, he’d thought Steve had said it instead of him, and it was a real mindfuck when he figured out that he hadn’t.

“Yeah…” Steve clearly didn’t know what else to say when Billy looked like he’d just been beaten senseless with a metaphorical nail bat. If Billy could’ve gotten his thoughts together to assess the immediate situation, he wouldn’t have blamed him. “Yeah.”

Billy had to swallow the maniacal, straitjacket-worthy laugh bubbling up from his chest. “Oh _fuck_.”

“Listen, I didn’t want to tell you this way,” Steve mumbled, wringing his hands and taking care to sound truthfully apologetic, although it wouldn’t have mattered if he weren’t. Billy tried to focus on his isolated voice, because he was very close from crawling into his own head, like a turtle into its shell, and never coming back out again. For the last few months, he’d known this outcome was inevitable—hell, he wasn’t entirely sure that the Devil himself hadn’t possessed him to push for that last-ditch attempt when Steve had wanted to quit—but nothing truly could’ve prepared him for right now, when it’d finally become all too real. He knew now that he’d been a fool not to expect this to hit him as hard as it did, to think that he’d be able to keep his repressed shock and snowballing fears from rearing their ugly heads again. “I came here because I was going to invite you out tomorrow night or something and bring it up then, but…”

“It’s fine,” he choked out, dropping his cigarette-containing fist into his lap and slamming a hand out onto the rough sidewalk to pick up his still-too-hot coffee without abandon. He knocked it back for an absurdly long drink, letting it slide down his windpipe like lava, but he didn’t care about the pain. He gave a spluttery little cough when he resurfaced, though, because he’d also somehow forgotten to breathe while he was at it. “Good going.”

That wouldn’t have worked on anybody; case in point, it didn’t convince either of them. But Billy wasn’t about to say what he was actually thinking ( _holy shit, what have I fucking done?_ ), so his piss-poor attempt at handling this maturely would have to do. And, expanding on that, he forced himself to open his mouth and converse like a coherent adult, because anything had to be better than the sound of his heart exploding in his ears, now beating arrhythmic enough that he very well might be going into cardiac arrest. “How…far along?”

Steve’s hands were still on his jeans, but he moved them to his lap so that he could pick at the cuticles on his thumbs. “I—four, almost five weeks,” he said, hushed. “I, uh, actually haven’t gone to the doctor yet. But I did the math.”

A little frenzied voice in Billy’s head shrilly asked, _ain’t that too early to know?_ Like he would have the damn answer. “So that means—”

Steve turned his head away, suddenly bashful—which, considering the circumstances that had led them here, was fucking ridiculous. “You were right, what you said that night.” He stared forlornly at the shorn hedges at the end of the sidewalk, as if there was a more palatable topic hiding behind those bushes. “No need to say, ‘I told you so’, okay?”

Billy did give a hollow laugh now, because the last thing on his fucking mind was to gloat. “Don’t need to worry about that,” he breathed out, rubbing at the building pressure between his eyebrows, where a tension headache was starting to bloom like an unchecked field of dandelions. He tried the whole maturity angle again, because he felt like there was some wall between them that he couldn’t get over until he gave it an actual shot, and he wanted to mean it even if he couldn’t, not yet, at least. “That’s…really good. For you.”

If Steve was less than convinced this time around, he didn’t show it; swiveling his head back to look at Billy, he gave a grateful but tiny, very tiny smile that did nothing to assuage the worry still written in his eyes. “That’s—thanks?” At least the rising intonation in his tone conveyed that he was just as hopeless at handling this as Billy was. It almost made him feel better, but not quite. “You, uh, helped. It never would’ve happened if you hadn’t come over, and…we…”

“Yeah,” Billy cut him off, even though he had a clear idea that Steve was going to leave that sentence hanging anyways.

“So…I guess thanks all around.” Steve pulled his long legs up and curled his milky-white arms around them, looking decidedly too young and too inexperienced to have gotten himself in the thick of something so big and terrifying and looming, like the dark clouds of a hurricane as it moved onto shore. But that was where the comparisons ended, because all storms eventually went away; in the upcoming weeks, Steve would start to _change_ and, in a few short months, so would his life— _forever._ And, even from a distance, so would Billy’s, too.

He now looked Steve over, curled inwards on himself and knees pressed up against his chest and normal-looking stomach, and got the sudden, horrible thought that he wouldn’t be able to do that at some point much too soon. Billy didn’t know what to do with or how to handle that information, but he did know that he detested that line of thinking, because it meant that his mental floodgates were now open; there would be no end to those intrusive thoughts and mental images, alongside countless sleepless days and nights in his immediate future. As if he needed more things to fuel his insomnia, for fuck’s sake.

“I just can’t believe it fucking worked,” he abruptly mumbled, although it was really just a thought that he’d spoken aloud. He kept his eyes on the cracked pavement beneath his feet and stridently resisted from looking at Steve’s midsection again.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve’s shoulders bounced as he snorted, albeit without humor. “That’s literally what I said to Robin.”

Billy was ready to let those words evaporate into the stillness of the early evening, just like everything else that’d passed between them in the last few minutes—or in the last millennia, because it felt indistinguishable at this point—but something made him poke further, if only to quell the bubbling questions that’d joined his mental fray.

“Robin?” He asked, swallowing against the constriction in his throat. There was that all-too-familiar name again, just as annoyingly familiar as it’d been at the end of July. He braced himself for impact, because if Steve was about to say that this was, god forbid, his out-of-the-blue, brand-new _boyfriend_ , he was one-hundred-percent done with this conversation for the immediate future. A man could only take so many shocks in one day, and he’d clearly already screwed up enough for several lifetimes.

Steve scrunched up his face; whether it was because he couldn’t believe that Billy didn’t know that name, or if he was miffed at himself for bringing it up in the first place, Billy didn’t know. But it didn’t take long to find out the answer to one of those mysteries.

“Just for the record,” he said slowly, selecting each word as carefully as defusing a bomb. “You’re not the first person that I’ve told. For now, it’s just you and some friends.”

Billy startled and dropped the thankfully unlit cigarette onto the ground, one terrifying name in bold, flashing letters at the forefront of his mind. “ _Maxine?_ ” He hissed. “She—”

He didn’t get a chance to say anything else—which was good, because it was going to be something that he probably would’ve regretted later on—for Steve held up his palms and shook them in a way that was meant to placate him. “No, no, not yet, don’t worry. I wouldn’t—before you—uh, it’s only Robin, one of my best friends, and her girlfriend.” He stopped to blink. “D’you even remember her?”

Billy’s heart was still beating like a drum, but he relaxed infinitesimally at the confirmation that this new development hadn’t reached his nosy sister’s ears just yet. He would tell her eventually, but he could just imagine the pity in her eyes, and it already stung. “Should I?”

Steve shrugged, but it was anything casual. “We all went to high school together around the same time. Okay, she was in your grade, not mine, but she did work at Scoops with me.”

Something long since forgotten unlocked in Billy’s subconscious; amid the hazy memories of that summer, when he’d spent his free time covertly stalking that stupid ice cream parlor that Steve had worked at, he could recall some constant figure in the same picture. He got vestiges of a girl around their age, with a tousled light-brown bob and a permanently bored expression (except for when she deigned to smirk at Steve) on her nondescript freckled face, handing over cone after cone with her fingernails adorned in chipped black nail polish. He’d seen her enough for her to have clearly made some sort of buried-but-lasting impression, even though they’d personally never talked—not even when she’d come to the pool after hours, when she’d dropped by to pick up Heather once or twice. Heather had never said anything about her to him, but she hadn’t needed to, because he’d known enough to tell what was going on; they hadn’t been that subtle, then again, neither had he been with any of the boys that he’d loved and lost before.

Or, rather, the ones that he’d gotten pregnant.

“…The chick that hung around Heather?”

Steve’s relief was palpable, and a real smile cracked his face. For a moment, he looked like he’d forgotten the life-changing news that he’d just spilled, and it was easy to pretend—if only for a second—that they were just reminiscing over the good old days, not detailing who else in the world knew about their dark deed that’d come to fruition. “Yeah! Wow, I can’t believe you actually do remember.” His hands, still facing upwards from mollifying Billy, fell back to loop around his shins. “Believe it or not, but they’re together now, and they live in New York City.”

Billy hadn’t known that, but he could definitely believe it; he immediately wanted to ask after Heather, because they’d naturally drifted apart after they’d both graduated, although he’d still thought of her, off and on, for the last ten years. Any other time, he would’ve, but there were more pressing matters at hand; he filed it away for a future conversation, for when he would hopefully have more of a grip, because he surely didn’t have one now.

Realizing that his hands felt conspicuously empty, he leaned an arm down to pick up the cigarette from the corner of the curb. “When do you tell everyone else?” He asked quietly, not looking at him as he busied himself with brushing off specks of debris from the paper casing.

Steve watched him work. “Not for a good while. I…” He faltered, took a second to clear his throat, and started back up again. “I wanted to ask…if you’d like me to wait to tell them everything until after you’ve gone home.”

“ _Shit._ ” Billy came close to dropping the cigarette again, and he stuffed it back into his open breast pocket just to be done with it.

“Not _everything_ , I didn’t mean that I’m going to tell them it’s y—what we did,” Steve quickly rectified. The smile that’d bloomed a minute ago was now long-gone, an uneasy grimace now in its place. “As far as they’re concerned, I went to some donation bank or asked someone else who’s completely unrelated to you. I’m only asking because, if you’re still here, you’d probably hear about it. From them, that is.”

Billy didn’t answer for a good minute; previously, he’d considered asking Steve to do exactly that, but, now that Steve had put the ball in his court, it made him feel… _involved_ , which was something that he wasn’t supposed to be. It wasn’t like he was actually going to have a say in the following weeks and months and years; his part in this trial was done, and, while he would probably come to regret it for the rest of his life, he recognized that this was just another facet of their original agreement. He’d agreed to it, had made his bed, and he’d just have to deal with Steve’s moves from here on out, like it or not.

“Do whatever you want,” he said gruffly, instantly knowing that he was coming across too callous, but it was just a side effect of the existential dread that’d seeped into every open pore and raw nerve. At least Steve was trying to be considerate, that had to count for something. “It’s out of my hands now.”

“O-okay,” Steve stuttered, nodding and head dropping like some invisible strings had been cut. “Uh, I’m still going to wait, but I guess I’ll just play it by ear.” His words petered out as he spoke, and he was clearly looking for reassurance, but Billy had none to give; inwardly, he felt a brief flash of relief, but that lasted about as long as the car that’d just driven past them and down the road—which was to say, not long at all.

Billy was torn between wanting to lapse back into silence and needing to keep talking, but both choices screwed him over either way: the quiet would mean being left alone with his thoughts, and a continued conversation would mean uncovering more unsavory things. He was paralyzed by indecisiveness, would’ve stayed that way in perpetuity, however, in the very next moment, his mouth suddenly conspired against him and threw a verbal coup. “Will you be—forget it.”

Steve looked at him with wide, expectant eyes, something that was common for him even before it’d become an accidental pun. “Go on.”

The sun had fully disappeared by now, and the streetlamp above suffused them in a wash of golden-hued light; Steve was shades of yellow, orange, and black juxtaposed against a deep indigo sky, and it was a sight that someone else might’ve called picturesque. Billy wasn’t one for flowery language, but he felt his heart ache as he looked into those shining eyes, practically glowing in the dark, and that was enough.

“Are you gonna be—” _Showing._ But the word stuck on his tongue like super glue, so Billy roughly thumbed in the direction of Steve’s torso, hoping that he’d understand what that meant without having to force himself to say it. The overhead lighting stretched out his silhouette along the parking lot, elongating and amplifying his movements into an exaggerated shadow play, one meant just for Steve and no one else. “—before I leave?”

Thankfully, Steve did. He even glanced down at himself in surprise, just as he had with the coffee cup carrier before. “Uh, maybe a little,” he bit at a patch of raw skin on his lip. Earlier, Billy had absentmindedly noticed that it’d looked like he’d been chewing on it more frequently than usual, and he now knew why. “But, at that point, it’ll be full-on winter, so I can hide with layers and coats until spring. You won’t see it. I can promise you that.”

Billy breathed out without making a sound. _Like that’ll make it any better. We’ll both still know it’s there. That it’s real._

Likewise, Steve shook his head, either to change the topic or to clear thoughts that Billy secretly wished that he could read. Then he pointed at Billy’s hands, like he’d just realized something. “Hey, sorry, you can still smoke if you want. I didn’t mean to take that from you.”

Billy kept his hands locked together in his lap. He really did hate smoking alone, but he wasn’t about to endanger Steve’s health when there was suddenly more on the line. “I’ll wait.” _Until you’re gone_ , he wanted to say, but he knew that would’ve come across as a harsh, thinly veiled attempt to get him to go away; which wasn’t his intent, even though this hadn’t exactly turned out to be the lighthearted break that he’d initially expected to share with Steve. In some alternate universe, he’d announced that he’d gotten his heat, had admitted defeat because of it, and they’d shared that belated cigarette. It was a pipe dream, but one that Billy found so easy to imagine he could scarcely believe the exact opposite had occurred. Shock was funny like that.

Regardless, Steve still heard it as an unspoken cue to leave. “I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure you’ve got work to get back to.” He picked up his cup of decaf and started to shift onto his knees, but Billy threw out an arm to stop him. Although he didn’t touch Steve, that one gesture made him realize with a start that the only person stopping him was himself; there wasn’t anyone else in the vicinity to catch them, and, if he happened to be judging Steve’s signals correctly, he wouldn’t exactly shy away from it, quite the opposite. Realistically, that line of thinking had gotten them into this trouble in the first place.

“That’s not what I meant.” He waited until Steve dropped his hand from his cup and smoothly repositioned himself back on the cement. “What next?”

“Sorry?”

“What happens now?” Billy asked, immediately frustrated at him for making him spell it out.

Steve ran a hand through his hair and stared out at the empty parking lot, save for their respective cars. “I—now it’s just a waiting game. I guess…researching doctors, stuff that I need to get, reading books…all that jazz.”

“Again,” Billy grit out. “Not what I meant.”

Steve parted his lips and blew air out in a _whoosh_. “About us?”

_No shit._

“No shit,” he said just as succinctly. “Are we…good?”

In his head, he could hear Max lowly chuckling at him, and it was so clear the he could’ve sworn she was right here on the sidewalk with them. What a puerile thing to ask, so juvenile and dramatic, but he had just no idea of where they went from here. Was this makeshift coffee break Steve’s way of breaking off whatever weird little alliance they’d accrued? If so, he’d prefer to know now than to make a fool of himself later.

Steve’s hand visibly twitched, and Billy wondered if he was suppressing the urge to reach out and touch him. He wondered further if he would let it happen if he did. “Of course,” Steve said easily, after he’d swallowed his little surprised intake of breath. “For sure. Listen, I know this is weird, it’s…no, more than weird, it’s _fucked up_ , but I’m good if you’re good, so we’re good.”

“Okay.” He didn’t know if he himself fully believed that, but, in the meantime, Steve sounded genuine enough for them both. If they were so good, then that surely meant he was free to get something else off his chest. “One more question.”

Steve didn’t say anything this time, just raised his eyebrows a tad and waited for it.

“You up for this?”

This time, Steve laughed breathlessly, but it wasn’t exactly out of mirth. “Bit too late for me not to be.”

Billy conceded that with a grunt, not wanting to get even more wrapped up in his thoughts or succumb to his deepest, innermost urge to say otherwise. He slipped a palm around his coffee cup, needing something to drown out the voices in his head; once he’d taken a sip, one that was slightly less painful now that his taste buds had gone numb, he recalled what little manners that he’d had to begin with. “Thanks for the coffee.”

Steve, watching him drink, was running an idle finger in circles on top of his own lid. “Any time.”

Billy immediately prepared himself for Steve to thank him for _it_ , too, and Steve even paused as if he were actually about to, but a few tense seconds of consideration presumably made him think better of it. Billy had never before been more relieved to see someone close their mouth; there was no outcome to that situation that didn’t result in them both cringing.

And maybe it was imagining that very nearly real possibility that made Billy realize he’d finally had enough of Steve’s company for one evening—which was a first for him, but, given the circumstances, not that surprising, either. It wasn’t like he was suddenly keen to be alone again, to go back to work as if his world hadn’t just been thrown off-center, but his sanity required it; the longer that he had to look into Steve’s eyes, the more his insides spasmed with a cocktail of miserable emotions. Besides, one of them had to call it a night at some point, and he was more than willing to be the one to do it.

“Well, _hm_ ,” he cleared his throat for what felt like the hundredth time. “Gotta get back to it.”

“Oh, yeah, don’t let me stop you.” Steve bounded to his feet with an agility that already had an expiration date, and he held his own cup in a white-knuckled fist—rather, a yellow-knuckled fist, what with the overhead lighting offsetting up the color balance. They stood chest-to-chest for only a few seconds, but long enough for them to make direct eye contact that neither could keep for very long. Steve was shifting hip-to-hip, but Billy stood ramrod straight. “We’ll…talk soon. Right?”

“Sure,” Billy half-lied, because he wasn’t even sure what he was going to do with himself as soon as Steve left, much less the next time that they’d interact with each other again. It was borderline rude, but he didn’t stop himself from backing up towards the front glass doors, and, without preamble, he raised a two-finger salute before he fully turned around, not even bothering to check if Steve saw it. He waited until he’d stepped back indoors—there was no taking notice of the loud chirp this time—before breaking into shuddered exhales that he’d somehow successfully suppressed for the better part of ten minutes. He set his coffee on Flo’s desk and braced both hands against the counter, eyes closed and head bowed as he counted to a hundred in a useless attempt to center himself. When that didn’t work, he upped it by another hundred, and then another fifty, and, by that point, the low roaring in his head had dulled enough that he could move back to his desk on pure instinct.

Slumping into his desk chair, he considered going home early, but being all alone in that dump with those old bad memories and some new rational fears sounded like a perfect recipe for a quick-and-easy mental breakdown. No, he would wait out his shift as he always did, but that didn’t mean he was going to be productive for the remaining hours; he’d be lucky to do a third of what he’d set out to accomplish tonight before Steve had come along. If there was any consolation, at least he didn’t have to worry about Hopper minding—he’d be too gratified from getting some long-awaited validation that night shifts weren’t as fun as they seemed, and his accompanying smirk was sure to be brighter than the following morning’s sherbet pink sunrise. And Billy would let him think that, because, in this case, the truth was stranger than fiction.


	12. Chapter 12

_October 1, 1995_

Max considered herself an easy-going person, in theory, but she required one thing above all others: to sleep in on the weekend, anywhere between ten or eleven or well into the early afternoon, as long as it was never, ever before nine. Hyperbole aside, there were (unfortunately) exceptions to any rule, but the point was that her habit had existed long before her mom’s second marriage to that asshole, and it’d endured well past it. Her love affair with waking up to her own circadian rhythm wasn’t some secret, either: her mom knew this, her friends knew this, even Ronnie—whose hectic flight schedule made him frequently lose track of the day due to being on all sorts of time zones—knew this. It went without saying that Billy knew this, too, which explained her infuriation at him calling her at the ungodly hour of _seven_ in the _morning_. But, in retrospect, and knowing him, he’d done it on purpose; they might have a close relationship now, far closer than they’d ever had when they were teenagers or actually still stepsiblings, but, every once and a while, he would go too far and act too much like his old boorish self for her to just let it slide.

Unseeing from the sleep crusted in her eyes, she lashed out a hand at the too-loud ringing phone and, although it was awful, hoped for his sake that something bad had happened to warrant such an early call. “What?” She snapped, shielding her face against the rising sun peeking through her curtains and staring at her linen blankets with bleary, tunneled vision. It was a good thing that they hadn’t invented video phones yet, because Billy otherwise would’ve borne the full brunt of her palpable fury.

“Get your ass out of bed and come over here.”

“Listen here, you—” Of course, he’d already hung up, but that didn’t take the wind out of her sails. She had half a mind to call back and chew him out for both the insensitive timing _and_ the abrupt ending of his call; ultimately, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. She assumed that it must be important enough ( _it’d better be_ ) to chance her ire, but she knew how to push his buttons just as much as he pushed hers. As she settled back into bed, she flipped the finger to her bedroom ceiling in an act of defiance that, although unseen by anyone other than her, didn’t lessen its symbolism. And she went back to sleep for as long as she wanted.

A few hours later, once she’d taken her sweet time getting up, showering, and eating a very late brunch, she was on her way to Billy’s place with only slightly less of a chip in her shoulder. Oddly, he hadn’t called back once, something that she was still stupefied by; she’d figured that he wouldn’t stop bugging her until she’d actually gotten there, but he hadn’t, and her interest was well and truly piqued, because that was _very_ unlike him. When he got into moods like this every so often, his impatience only got worse; actual radio silence only occurred when he was busy or upset with someone or something, and neither of those seemed like the case here.

Instead of parking along the street as usual, she pulled off the main road and into the cracked driveway on the side of the house. Billy’s old truck was there, sitting forlornly in front of the ugly green sheet metal carport, and she glared at it as she got out of her Integra and walked around to the front.

She’d only been here once more before he’d started renovating the place to put it on the market, and, now looking over his handiwork, she was moderately impressed. The pavement was old and sun-bleached and the siding was still off-white, but they were both newly spick-and-span from a heavy round of power washing. The grass was still patchy, for now, but also short and visibly greener, and the scraggly dead hedges on either side of the front porch were gone; the only trace that they’d been there were tangled patches of roots that would either re-spawn or die off in time. Regardless, that last change alone was an enormous improvement, and the same went for the occasional paint-bare spots on the outer porch walls, where the worst crumbling bits had been sanded down in preparation for an eventual repaint, perhaps come spring, considering it wouldn’t dry optimally due to the cooling autumnal temperatures. When she sided up to the screened-in porch door, she poked at a taut, clean panel of newly replaced screening and received a small amount of satisfaction when it didn’t give way.

She didn’t even bother with ringing the doorbell or knocking when she got to the storm door, merely yanking it open—this time, it was thankfully unlocked—and stepping into her ex-home without hesitation. She’d expected it to look the same as ever, perhaps even tidier than usual to account for the outside’s recent makeover, but that idea turned out to be wholly incorrect.

Just from where she was standing in the foyer, she found the place, in short, ransacked. The bookshelves, mismatched chairs, rugs, and various lamps were all gone, leaving the room with the couch, Neil’s La-Z-Boy, an oak side table, and the television in the middle, like an island set adrift in an endless ocean. Intaking a breath and getting a noseful of Murphy Oil Soap, she stared at the bare walls, lightly scuffed and featuring rectangular rings where there’d used to be hanging frames. All at once, she started to piece together the reasoning for his abrupt call, and it wasn’t shaping up in her favor.

“Yo, you here?” She called faintly, still glancing around at the barren room as she took off her light fleece jacket and threw it in a heap onto the couch. “William? You asshole?”

That did the trick. He came bounding through the kitchen’s corresponding archway a second later, wearing a threadbare black t-shirt and jeans and running Nikes on his feet, and a look on his face that bordered on bewildered and displeased. “William? _Asshole?_ ” He repeated, going for outraged but undermined by the ghost of a smirk appearing on his face. “Jesus, how nice of you to finally show up.”

Seeing him in the flesh, already acting cocky as ever and just as mulish, made her simmering annoyance rear its head again. “Don’t call that frickin’ early unless it’s important,” she said crossly, snatching a pancake-flat pillow off the couch and throwing it at his face. He caught it effortlessly and dropped it to rest against the wall trim, and she tossed another. “Maybe I would’ve come faster if I’d actually cared, but I didn’t.”

“’S good to finally get confirmation that you don’t know how to follow simple directions,” he retorted, lobbing the second pillow back at her, leaving the first on the floor still in an undignified heap. He turned back into the kitchen and then into the adjoining dining room, wordlessly expecting her to follow him. “Now that you’re here, you can make yourself useful.”

“Useful?” Max repeated, scoffing. But she still trailed behind him, and her frown deepened upon seeing the small mountain of randomly assorted furniture piled on and around the circular dining table. The bigger pieces, such as the rocking chair and the rolled-up rugs, were in the corner of the room. “Oh, you’ve _got_ to be kidding. You seriously dragged me here just to do your bidding? That’s it?”

“What did you expect, a playdate?” He crossed his arms and peered over at the pile that he’d assembled in his limited free time. “Think of it as familial obligation.”

With her eyes glued on the mess, she shook her head. “Newsflash, dickhead, but we’re not even _legally_ family anymore.”

“What does that matter? You’re here, ain’t ya?”

It didn’t, but admitting that just would’ve validated him further, so she just bypassed it entirely. “Ugh, _fine_.” She set her hand on one of the tilted bookshelves, books conspicuously absent and probably in a trash bag out back, and pulled on its corner. It didn’t budge. “But only because I’m already here. What do you need me to do?”

He gestured with his hand, arms still crossed, as if it were obvious. “Moving. And helping me go through this crap.”

 _And?_ “Not to be stupid, but the house hasn’t sold yet.”

“I know that, which is why I’m getting rid of most things ahead of time,” he said, now semi-irritated. “I’m sick of looking at all of it, and I’d rather deal with it while it’s still relatively ‘nice’ outside. There’s no goddamn way that I’m hauling this shit out in a month or two when it’s cold as balls.”

Max opened her mouth to refute that, but nothing of the sort came out. “Alright, I’ve gotta admit, that’s kinda smart.”

In return, he quirked an eyebrow. “Only kinda?”

“I can’t give you too much credit, ’cause it’ll go straight to your already-big head.”

Billy snorted as he stepped next to her, shooed her hand away, and lifted the bookshelf off the table as if it weighed nothing—for him, it probably didn’t. _Show-off._ “Just tell me what you want to keep.”

Max watched him set the bookshelf to the side before she moved in to pick up a now-freed handful of hanging frames. “Nothing,” she said, scowling when she caught sight of a particularly distasteful photo of her mom and Neil on their ill-fated wedding day. Her ten-year-old self was to the side of the bridal party, clutching an ugly bouquet in front of her even uglier beige taffeta dress and sneering back at the photographer. She looked over it for any sign of a pimply fourteen-year-old Billy, but he was absent; if she remembered correctly, he’d disappeared without a trace for a large chunk of the reception, and, apparently, from the photography sessions to boot. “Too many bad memories of moving this shit here from California.”

She looked up from the frame, and the pinched look on his face perfectly relayed his thoughts on the matter, negating the point of asking him the same question in return. She felt his eyes on her as she undid the clasps on the back of the frame, slipped the photo out from between the glass and the cardboard, and then ripped it cleanly down the middle. Pocketing the portion with her and her mom, she crumpled up the Neil side and tossed it into the nearby trash can without really aiming. Billy didn’t say anything as he moved a footstool to the floor, just eyed the archway as if he expected his dad to materialize there. Max pretended she didn’t notice, but she felt the ghost of him here, too.

Eventually, between Billy lifting things off and Max shifting them to the side, they cleared the dining room table and completely filled the open space leading into the kitchen. It was tricky to navigate now, so Billy slipped around the pieces like a hedge maze, pulling his car keys out from his jean pocket.

“I’ll go pull the truck out, and you start bringing junk to the pavement,” he told her, opening the side door and propping it open with a brick that was just off to the side. “One at a time, and save the heavy shit for me, got it? Don’t be stupid and hurt yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Looking over what could’ve been a rather successful estate sale, she rapped her knuckles on the dining room table. “Are you sure about this? You’re not even gonna try to sell anything?”

He turned back, shoulder skimming the doorframe, the clouded daylight illuminating him from behind. “The bedframes and table and chairs are going with the house,” he said, plucking at the ring of keys until he’d isolated the one for the car. “I’ll only deal with the mattresses, couch, and television when I’m about to leave. The rest could go out for the trash right now for all I care.”

“Can’t argue with that.” She sent him off with a nod and hoisted one of the wrapped-up rugs. If she really thought about it, that did make the most sense, because most of this stuff wasn’t worth the effort of pawning it off, and she didn’t foresee Billy bothering to hold a garage sale any time soon. So, she carried each rug to the stairway, one after another, and threw them onto the concrete landing, leaving them for him to retrieve after he’d finished reversing into the spot closest to the sidewalk.

Just as they had in the dining room, they worked at a comfortable pace: Max moving lighter furniture down the first flight of stairs, and Billy lifting them the rest of the way and stacking them haphazardly in the truck bed. After about ten minutes of that, she got through most of the items that she could feasibly handle on her own, and, since she wasn’t willing to let Billy play He-Man and single-handedly carry the rest of them, she told him as much and called him back inside. He rolled his eyes at her from the back of the truck, but he ambled up the steps all the same.

The remaining pieces were brutes, and they alternated which of them went down the steps first and which would be the other’s spotter; it was a good strategy, but one that came with plenty of aggravation. “We never read,” she grumbled, grappling with a corner of one of those deadweight bookshelves. “Why the fuck did we even have these?”

“Storage?” He grunted, letting her go through the door first this time. “Don’t ask me.”

Once they’d dropped it to the pavement, she retreated to the dining room to survey what was left: one wide and wobbly side table, two end tables of varying sizes yet of similar ungainliness, a lamp, and a scuffed rocking chair that specifically came from Billy’s side of the family; she’d never asked, but she had an inkling that it’d been his mom’s at some point or another. It was by far the heaviest and most unwieldy object left, but there was no time like the present, so she walked up to it with Billy following right behind her.

Exhaling in preparation, she went to pick it up from behind and stopped when an idea struck. “Hey,” she said suddenly, straightening and giving the headboard a light push, then watching it do what it did best. “Maybe you should wait and see if Steve would like this for the baby’s nursery?”

Truly, her intent wasn’t to pry—she knew better than anyone that that was a very tricky topic to bring up, but she didn’t see the harm in just one little suggestion. As far as she knew, the plan was still on and in progress to becoming a reality; she hadn’t heard anything about that side of things in a long time, because Billy was purposefully keeping it that way. Moreover, there was no outcome where she’d expected him to actually offer any new details, although she reasoned that she could glean some sort of non-answer from Billy’s very guarded reaction.

Of course, that’s what she’d thought until the moment Billy went very, very still. Sensing the mood shift in the air, she looked up at his face and saw that he’d turned hard eyes onto her, suddenly looking like an actual cop with an actual vengeance or, at least, as scarily intense as he’d been as a cruel, hurting teenager. “How do you know?” He grit out, pinning Max in place with that icy look and, in the process, temporarily flummoxing her beyond the capacity for rational speech. Billy hadn’t baked his brains out so much that he’d forgotten he’d been the one to tell her, had he? Sure, they’d been smoking pot when he’d originally shared his plan to quote-unquote father Steve’s baby, but not so much that they wouldn’t be able to remember _that_ conversation; marijuana could gloss over the finer details, maybe lead to forgetfulness with enough exposure, but it wasn’t a substitute for Rohypnol, for god’s sake. That and they’d almost discussed it on the night of the Fourth of July, but that didn’t exactly help his case here.

“What?” She asked honestly, equally startled and bewildered. But even as she said it, her mind was already jumping to conclusions; a hasty explanation made itself known, subsequently removed the air from her lungs, and, although she really tried to, she was unable to keep realization from bleeding into her expression.

Billy watched it unfold across her face, then turned his back on her again, balled his hands up into fists, and pounded one on top of the particularly rickety side table. It wobbled dangerously, its little chopstick legs threatening to give out and make him look more violent than he had any right to be. “Fuck my ass,” he seethed, shoulders up to his ears and voice thick with anger and self-loathing and some other emotion that she could not quite place.

Wringing her hands, Max took one step towards him, one step back, and then two steps forward. He didn’t seem specifically upset at her, mercifully, but she still took care to approach him with caution so as not to become the unwitting target. Her head was buzzing with jumbled thoughts; while she already had a damn-near accurate idea of what’d just transpired, she needed to hear it from him before she could proceed. “…Billy?”

“You weren’t supposed to know until later,” he snarled in the opposite direction, and it was now apparent that he was beside himself with rage from his own doing. He wasn’t usually one to misspeak, what with his lifelong aptitude at burying his actual feelings behind walls of biting rage stronger than Fort Knox, so this must be just as upsetting to him as it was surprising to her. “God, _fuck_ , don’t say _anything_ to _anyone_ , you fuckin’ hear me, Maxine? Not a _goddamn_ word.”

_That must mean Steve is—_

Now undeterred by his wild demeanor, Max stepped around him and tugged ever-so-gently on the front of his shirt, pulling the fabric in the direction of the couch in the other room. “Come on, let’s talk,” she whispered, hoping it was coming across as soothing and not patronizing; Billy often couldn’t distinguish the two. “It can’t be that big of a deal. Whatever this is about, you know I won’t say anything.”

“It _is_ that big of a deal.” He so viciously ground the base of his palms into his eye sockets that Max took it upon herself to reach up and tug his wrists away. “Fuck. _Fuck!_ ”

“Come on,” she repeated, more curtly this time, and she strong-armed him through the kitchen and towards the living room. As angry as he was, he was pliant to the touch, and he let her drag him to the couch, where they all but collapsed on either end. Then, they just sat there; Billy, digging his fingers into his face and cupping his eyes to avoid looking at her, and Max, crossing her arms at the wrists and not thinking twice about scooching closer to him, if only for moral support.

“Billy—” She began, intending on giving some heartfelt speech that would’ve made some family therapist out there very proud, but he cut her off a mere second later.

“Steve’s pregnant.”

Well, there it was, what she’d only just started pondering with an admittedly high degree of confidence. She suddenly felt very fortunate that she’d been intrinsically wrapped up in this tangled web from the very start, because she tried to picture hearing those words without any warning and what her immediate reaction would’ve looked like. If she had to guess, probably several instances of ‘what the _fuck_ ’ accompanying a shocked look on her face that probably would’ve stayed that way for good. Or maybe she just would’ve laughed in disbelief, as if Billy was one for joking about things like that, even though he sure as fuck wasn’t. Either way, it wouldn’t have been something beneficial to the situation, and she was glad that she had the proper knowledge to remedy that now.

“Wow,” she said slowly. Even though she’d started to suspect as such, surprise was still the gist of her feelings on the matter. “Congratulations…to him.” Billy was still shielding his face, which gave her the confidence to oh-so-carefully offer, “And…to you as well?”

Flustered, he dropped his hands, balled them up again, and flung them to either side of his thighs. He audibly fumbled with an answer before gruffly settling on, “It’s not—you know I’m not involved. It’s not really mine.”

“Do you…want to be?”

His head snapped up, and, this time, there wasn’t any uncertainty in his voice. “What the fuck kind of question is that? Of course not.”

 _An entirely rational one_ , she thought with no small amount of derision. _You’re gonna have a kid, regardless if you’re there to raise it or not. Holy shit, Billy’s actually going to be a_ dad _. What the hell?_

“I’m going to say something that’s probably going to piss you off,” she began, chewing on her lip between pauses. “But…come on, don’t lie to me. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now, not many people can, but there’s no shame in being scared shitless. I know I would be, and I’d be worried about you if you really weren’t.”

“I’m not—” He hissed, but, in a snap, the fight went out of him like a popped balloon, although the anger still simmered like lava. “Fine, fuck, I’m scared, okay? Happy?”

“No,” she smiled wistfully at him, but he wasn’t meeting her eyes for anything. “But I appreciate the truth, at least. Talk to me, get some of it off your chest, maybe you’ll feel better. How long have you known?”

Like pulling teeth, he managed to utter, “Since Friday.”

Her eyebrows nearly rose to her hairline. “You’ve been stewing over this for _two days_ with no one else to talk to? God, here I was thinking Steve called you up like a few hours ago or something.” What was the point of torturing himself with this information when he so easily could’ve gone to her? _Stubborn idiot._ “Dude, spill the beans.”

She patiently waited for him to start, not willing to push him any further; when he finally did, he purposefully kept the details to a minimum. At first, he just barely broached what’d happened a few days prior—how Steve had come over on a nightshift with coffee and had told him the big news with as much tact as dropping a hot potato in his lap—but, without prodding, he went even further back, even managing to drop another bombshell in there.

He’d no sooner finished talking, and Max held a hand up, inches away from jamming it into his big dumb face. “I’m sorry—did you just imply that you guys had _sex_ in August?”

She almost expected him to get mad again over spilling another secret, but he just blinked lazily at her and mockingly curled his lips. He was too pale and his muscle movements were too forced for it to feel like normal, but it was a start. “How do you think people typically get pregnant, Max?”

“Typically, duh-doy,” she bristled, not liking his implication that she was ignorant of even basic biology. “But with your… _history_ , I just figured you two used a, uh, a syringe or some equivalent.” Something flickered across his face, and he cast his eyes away. That startled her into realizing that they had, at least initially. Apparently, it’d escalated. “Holy moly, that’s certainly…something. Does that mean you two…?”

With the glower he was still giving her, he couldn’t have looked any sharper if he tried, and she immediately wondered if all of this was his way of irrefutably getting his point across or just his way of trying to assure himself. “No,” he said firmly. “No, we’re not. At all.”

“Oh,” she said benignly, affecting a semi-genial tone, but there was nothing that Billy could do or say to convince her otherwise; she was more perceptible and certainly not so gullible that she would just take him at face value, especially when it came to his burgeoning relationship with Steve. There’d been enough weirdness there long before this whole ‘trying and succeeding at conception’ scheme; now, it’d just increased tenfold, no, a trillionfold. “Well, then this is complicated.”

He just grunted. She could read his nonverbal noises well enough, had had plenty of practice in the almost fifteen years that she’d known him, and she could just hear something snarky behind it. _A blind and deaf person could tell you that, Maxine._

“Well, then, I have to ask—at the very least, do you like him?”

He made a move to get up from the couch, and she grazed her knuckles against his shoulder to get him to stay. He did, just barely, but it also worked to garner a steely reply from him. “I’m not going to answer that.”

“Billy…” She groaned. “I’m not asking if you _love_ Steve, just if you _like_ him or not.”

“Like I need to spell it out,” he snapped, and the blotchy red spots high on his cheekbones mesmerized her. “You’re smart, I’m sure you’ve already got it all figured out, right? You don’t need me to sit here and wax poetic.”

 _Is he embarrassed about—oh my god, he is such an_ idiot _. What is it about men and their feelings?_

She wanted to say just that, but he was getting increasingly more agitated, less in general and more at her, and she made the executive decision to drop it for the time being. “It was just a question,” she said gently, shrugging to give the illusion of being flippant. “It’s none of my business anyways. But if we’re switching topics, what happens next? Are you going to stay here until…uh, it’s born?”

The lack of a gendered pronoun was a specific choice on her part; desensitizing, maybe, but the right choice solely based on the look on his face, which explained without words that he couldn’t handle something as definitively sobering as ‘he or she’—or even ‘the baby’—just yet. And she wasn’t going to break that dam for him, no ifs, ands, or buts.

“Not planning to.”

“That’s not necessarily a ‘no’, and you know it,” she admitted quietly, rubbing the pads of her fingers over her royal blue nails. “Does that mean there’s a chance?”

Regardless of the baby situation, discussing Billy’s departure was something that she’d been putting off addressing for quite some time; ever since her mother had moved to Mishawaka last spring with her new boyfriend, Max had taken for granted how comforting it was to have a member of her family here with her in Hawkins. Plus, before his unwitting return, she hadn’t seen Billy in person for a long while due to him living thousands of miles away, and she couldn’t fathom them not seeing each other for such a long stretch like that again, much less years at a time.

“I’m saying I don’t know,” he replied tersely, and he looked away to stare out of the window at nothing in particular.

“Ah,” she popped her lips and, suddenly, felt far too sober for her own good. “Hey, you got any more weed here? I think we both need it more than ever.”

Folding his arms against his chest, he bounced his back against the couch cushions and shook his head. “I fuckin’ wish, but I’ve only got a fresh pack of menthols and two bottles of whiskey.” He paused. “Scratch that, one bottle of whiskey. They were some necessary purchases I made last night when I couldn’t sleep.”

“Maniac,” she said, almost affectionately. For years, she’d been pressuring him to quit cold-turkey—someone in his life had to, because Michael surely hadn’t—and, while she was proud of him for cutting back, he’d never fully taken her advice. Which, considering him, wasn’t a surprise; maybe she should’ve tried reverse psychology and championed his vices instead. Sometimes, however, his obsessive tendencies could become quite the boon, because his always-there stash was never appreciated more than in cases such as these. “Fine by me. Go get ’em.”

Not needing to be told twice, he went to do just that, but he stopped short of actually getting up onto his feet. “Not in here,” he said bitterly, and that was the first time in his entire life that he’d ever said anything of the sort. “Don’t need my realtor chewing me out over the walls smelling like cigarette smoke. Again.”

To prove his point, she took a tentative sniff of the air. She was nose blind in here, far too used to the obnoxious odor of lingering must and old wood, but, then again, she hadn’t noticed a pungent whiff of stale ash when she’d entered, either. “I don’t smell anything. Did Neil keep smoking in here or what?”

At the mention of his father’s name, he flinched, but it was almost imperceptible. “Your guess is as good as mine. And there’s a reason for that, ’cause she actually made me clean the damn walls. She’s anal, but she guarantees it’ll sell, so I just let her yap herself out and give me a to-do list that, jokes on me, I actually did.”

“Huh. At least the results speak for themselves.” She turned to look through the kitchen’s archway at the sliver of dining room, where muted daylight flooded the walls from the still-open side door. “Then let’s go out back and sit on the swing.”

Max had expected some resistance, but he offered none. Billy was a baby with a pacifier— _er, too soon?_ —when it came to smoking and drinking, not just when it counted, and he got up and made his way over to the kitchen with such haste that it was frankly impressive.

She followed but didn’t crowd him at the counters, just squeezed past and gave him his much-needed space; from there, she passed through the dining room and stepped out onto the small stair landing.

The old patio swing set, just paces from the dining room stairway and visible from the kitchen window, was just as ugly and creaky as she remembered; the avocado green paint was chipping and peeling from years of extended sun exposure and inclement weather, and the heaviness of the two-seater had long since bowed the metal bar. She gingerly sat on it, not trusting her full weight just in case one of the chains snapped, but looks were deceiving, because it held fast. Although the hinges did sound like a car crusher when she tried to give it a little momentum, so she cut that shit right out.

Now leaning up against the mesh backing, Max threw her legs out and swiveled her torso to rest her elbow on the top of the seat. She passed the minute or two that followed by looking over the side of the house, Billy’s full truck bed, the fellow neighbors’ houses across the street and down the bend, and the sea of trees above it all. Someone else might’ve called this peaceful, but she was loath to find even one ounce of comfort in this hellscape.

Her eyes were still on the skies when the snap and hiss of a lighter and a tiny _clink_ of glass drifted out from the doorway. She tilted her head down and saw him coming to a stop on the sidewalk, eyes partially closed and brow furrowed as he took that initial drag on a fresh cigarette, another unlit one in the crook of his pinky. There were two tumblers balanced in his other hand, the glasses hanging from between his index and middle fingers; she noted the moderate amount of tawny-colored liquid already poured in each, although Billy’s own looked more generously topped off. She didn’t mind the discrepancy, because she still had to drive home, and, between the two of them, she wasn’t the one going to have a friggin’ _baby_ out there in the world this time next year.

He sidled up to her, and Max gratefully accepted one of the glasses; she waited until he’d taken another drag before snatching her own cigarette out from his curling hands. He wordlessly tossed the lighter into her lap and dropped ungainly into the metal seat beside her, sending vibrations through the wobbly chain that neither paid any heed. Before doing anything else, she took a teeny-tiny sip of whiskey, which went down like a drip of gasoline, and gave a small sigh. “Damn, this is honestly so much better. It’s a prison in there.”

“Yeah.” Billy gripped his makeshift snifter with white knuckles and came close to snapping his cigarette in two with his other hand. “It is.”

They took turns smoking and drinking in silence for a good two or ten minutes, breathing plumes of smoke out into the overcast skies, content with the quiet but comforting sounds of an early autumn afternoon and people around the neighborhood unintentionally making their presences known.

Billy taking a sip and clearing his throat afterwards, apropos of nothing—much less an intent to start a conversation—made her jolt out of the lazy thoughts that she’d fallen into.

“Is there anything else you want to talk about?” She hedged, earning what justifiably could be called a glare for her efforts. “Or do you just want me to drop it? I can do that, you know. Sometimes. If you ask nicely.”

“I don’t know,” he muttered, making her wait until he’d taken a less-than-small sip and had given a slight grimace from its corresponding burn. “I don’t even know what _I_ want anymore, even outside of this…new thing.”

She lifted her own glass, cigarette perched between the same fingers, and paused. “Whaddya mean?”

“I don’t want to stay here any longer. This town, this place…” He raised his glass and swept his arm over the horizon, sloshing the liquid fire but somehow not spilling it. “It’s bad memories all around. Small, ugly, too. And the weather’s just about to get real shitty.”

“But?” She prompted, ever clairvoyant.

“But,” Billy glowered at her again before continuing, acting as if she hadn’t just spoken. “But I can’t leave now, Max. Jim keeps not-so-subtly hinting that he wants me to stick around full-time, dad’s only going to get worse, so I’d just have to come back anyways when there’s some final decision to make, and now there’s all of this… _fuckery_ with Steve. I’m fucking stuck.” He exhaled loudly through his nostrils. “What do I do?”

“I wish I could tell you, but I’m trying to figure out my own shit, too.” The cynical look he gave her made her shrug. “What? Okay, not like yours, granted, but life’s weird like that for everyone, buddy. If you’re comfortable where you are, you won’t be forever, and vice versa.”

He gave an aborted snort. “You need to work on your motivational speeches.”

“I’m serious,” she said, taking care to actually sound serious. “If you’re really unsure, go back to California for a weekend or longer and clear your head. If you can’t stand it, stay there. If you can, take some more time here. I can always hold down the fort for you, no problem. Introduce me to your realtor first, though—she sounds like a handful and then some.”

He didn’t say anything, and she turned her head to look at him. There was something akin to awe on his face, and it instantly made her roll her eyes and press her cigarette to her lips.

“You’d do that?”

“No, I offered just so I could say ‘sike’,” she puffed, snickering when her glass made a dull _thwack_ as it hit the corner of the swing. “Of course I would, good god. Family ties that bind us, blah-blah.”

He hummed in consideration. “It’s…not a bad idea. I’ll think about it. Maybe when I’ve got time off for Christmas.”

Her laughter ebbed away, just like the smoke parting her lips. “Now, hang on a second.”

Billy instantly recoiled, turning his entire body to face her head-on. “Oh _Christ_ , don’t fucking tell me you want me to be a third wheel at some party thrown by your boyfriend’s enormous weirdo family.”

“Please?” Max all but pleaded. She’d only started working up the nerve to introduce him to the idea, dropping hints here and there, and he’d just shot her undercover plan to shit in a matter of seconds. It was an all-time record. “I’ve told them so much about you, this big-shot LAPD cop, and, I swear to god, I think they think I’ve made you up.” Especially Ronnie’s dad, a retired police chief from a district just bordering Ann Arbor, who always peppered her with pedantic questions about her ex-stepbrother as if he were trying to catch her in some ongoing lie.

“Can’t you just come over here, and we can do _this_?” He appealed, again pointing all over with his glass-holding hand. “Play your cards right, and I can shake-down some low-level weed dealer before then, probably near Starcourt or outside of the old arcade you and your weakly nerds loved so much.”

“The Palace closed down because it’s the nineties, and we have actual computer games now, thank you very much.” The humor of them pleading each other for things neither of them wanted was not lost on her. “And as fun and irresponsible and _illegal_ as that sounds, I’ve already made a commitment. And don’t think I’m just going to let this one go, because nobody should be alone on Christmas, least of all you. So, please, just be a big boy and think about it.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled. “Like I need _more_ things to think about.”

That sobered up the conversation again, which was ironic considering that they were getting progressively more inebriated. “Hey, it’ll all work out, _all_ of it, I promise.” She drained the rest of her glass and blinked as it slid down her windpipe. “When you get too caught up in your own head, just think of how insignificant we all are in comparison to the size of the galaxy—evolved primates on a teeny-tiny blue marble surrounded by an endless void. Does that make you feel better?”

“Actually, it makes me feel worse, but nice try.”

She sighed, tapping the butt of her cigarette on the swing’s busted armrest, and looked out over the treetops and decidedly not at her ever-unfortunate brother, his mood indefinitely beleaguered by his ongoing saga of baby blues. “Oh, Billy.”


	13. Chapter 13

_October 10, 1995_

Morning sickness sounded harmless in theory, but Steve had thrown up more in the last two weeks than in his almost thirty years combined.

Quite frankly, it was unreal just how suddenly, violently sick he’d become, as if a hidden switch in his body had miraculously been flipped from ‘okay’ to ‘everything must go’, and the situation had only worsened with each passing day. In the beginning—like its infamous namesake implied—his nausea had occurred primarily between the wee hours of four and eight, but, unfortunately, it hadn’t taken long for random bouts to creep into the late afternoons and early evenings, too. He was especially miffed about that unwelcome encroachment; in the mornings, at least, he could brush his teeth twice and stave off eating for a few hours until enough of his lingering queasiness could subside, but nighttime was meant for decompressing, not being doubled over on the couch, feeling like death warmed over, with a double-lined trashcan perpetually within grasp. He would’ve parked out on the bathroom floor and prayed to the porcelain god, maybe would’ve saved several dozen trash bags that way, but he was nauseated for literally _hours_ on end, and comfortable upholstery and a blaring television gave him something else to focus on other than the very isolated sound of himself gagging when nothing but pure stomach bile came up.

The one solace in this mess of his own making was the looming promise of proper medical intervention, and soon, at that. He’d made his first appointment the day after he’d initially found out, both out of excitement and because he was rather good at being proactive when he put his mind to it, and he was endlessly looking forward to getting some amount of counsel on whether this amount of sickness was normal for first-timers. The few paperbacks that he’d preemptively gotten in June weren’t that helpful, each simply skimming over the first trimester’s corresponding symptoms and boiling their advice down to ‘stay hydrated, take it easy, wait it out’. Which was easier said than done, because Steve was finding all three of those suggestions to be a daily struggle—nay, _torment_.

And as if he didn’t have enough on his hands with the horrible, unrelenting vomiting spells, there was the fatigue—which, granted, was the more bearable side effect of the two, and that was saying something. When he wasn’t busy voiding his paltry stomach contents, he was curled up on some soft surface—usually his bed, but the couch and armchair got lots of mileage as well—desperately trying to draw even a modicum of energy back into his listless body, but that was just as effective as a crack in a dam was watertight. He slept deeply and for long periods at a time, however, no matter what, he would awaken utterly drained like he hadn’t bothered at all. It wasn’t getting bad enough that he was having trouble driving or paying attention at work, but, if the next eight or so months boasted some sort of unyielding exhaustion along the same lines, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. He’d very recently started to get that feeling of being in over his head, as if he hadn’t thoroughly entertained the idea of just what he’d signed up for, but he pointedly refused to let himself get _too_ fed up with these less-than-savory developments. It was already a hassle, sure, but so were most worthwhile undertakings in life; not to mention that if millions, _billions_ of other people throughout history could do this, warts and all, so could he.

At least, that’s what Steve kept telling himself, because he wasn’t quite convinced yet. For now, he remained laser-focused on taking it one day at a time, no matter how taxing they’d become, as well as his goals in the immediate future: specifically, counting down the upcoming date of his first appointment and the ever-looming onset of the second trimester, because one was a rite of passage and the other was the inevitable eye in the hurricane, bringing with it a temporary balanced period where he wouldn’t be sick any longer but would still feel comfortable until _things_ , so to speak, progressed further.

The big day—well, not _the_ big day, but one of many small-big milestones along the way—came a third into October and started with what had become his new normal: waking up, immediately stumbling out of bed to be sick, taking a cold shower, throwing up a little more, getting dressed, and carefully brushing his teeth. And, somewhere between it all, sipping as much lukewarm water as he could handle, which was as futile an effort as attempting solid food; he’d graduated to not being able to keep anything down these days, not even liquids. Still, he had to try, because it was either that or waste away, and, thankfully, his self-preservation hadn’t given up as readily as his appetite had.

Regardless, by now, he’d had plenty of practice balancing his general unwellness with his standard morning routine, so he got out of his apartment and onto the road in a timely manner. Up to this point, it’d been a run-of-the-mill morning, but the similarities ended when, instead of heading north on I-69 to Fort Wayne, he turned in the direction of downtown Hawkins. He’d taken a personal day—one where he’d realistically neglected to share the reason—for the sole purpose of staying nearby, and he only felt reaffirmed in his choice as he drove the short distance across town.

In hindsight, it would’ve killed two birds with one stone if he’d scheduled his appointment somewhere around Fort Wayne after a day at work, but he hadn’t, because he’d decided not to go out of Hawkins for all his upcoming medical examinations and, eventually, pediatric check-ups. While there were surely more lauded doctors in a bigger city, and it would’ve been more convenient with his current schedule, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the cons would eventually outweigh the pros. Traveling about an hour away was doable with all of _this_ still in the very early stages, but it would be a different story come late spring, when he’d be lucky if he still had the energy, never mind the desire, to leave the apartment. He’d been doing that more lately, making preemptive choices based on what aspects of his life would be affected first and what would change gradually, because it was going to be easier in the long run if he started rolling with the punches now instead of later.

Getting situated in the waiting room at the doctor’s office was nothing new, just as straightforward as it’d been every other time in his life, although the doctor in question and the check on the clipboard detailing the purpose for his visit had both inexplicably changed. Hawkins wasn’t as completely Podunk as it’d been ten-plus years ago, but it certainly wasn’t affluent enough for there to be separate districts for each type of specialist; the sprawling reddish brick building just a stone’s throw from Hawkins Memorial Hospital hosted several offices amid a collective lobby, and it worked out well for practitioners and citizens alike, at least in terms of convenience.

Which, ten minutes in, is exactly where Steve found himself: anxiously passing the time on a blue plastic chair in that very same lobby, one inhabited by a handful of other patients awaiting care for their own unspecified maladies. Most were other adults either around his age or a little older, realistically sniffling from that common bug going around, but there were three kids there as well: two visibly bored middle school-aged boys sitting next to their respective mothers, and one little blonde girl, at least preschool-aged, playing with a bead maze on the floor and dropping each brightly colored piece onto the wood base with a series of shallow but satisfying _clinks_. Her father was sitting in the chair closest to her, slouched over and picking at a bead or two in solidarity, and Steve couldn’t help but watch them play from the corner of his eye. If the dad looked vaguely like Billy from here, all dirty blond curls and toned arms, Steve forcibly didn’t let himself linger on the insidious thought, but there was no avoiding those muted whispers of paternal encouragement or, when a nurse in flowered scrubs called a name (“Grace?”) from the doorway, how carefully he took the little girl’s hand in his own and shepherded her away.

The exchange had been so ordinary that nobody else in the room had even spared them a second glance, but an early wave of nerves and hormones had apparently already turned Steve into a basket case, or so it’d seemed. Case in point, it’d left his mouth dry, too dry, and his over-beating heart had taken up residence next to the lump permanently lodged in his throat. He’d been so lost in his stunned reverie that, upon hearing his own name called some indeterminate time later, he’d reacted without really thinking, and his haste sent him careening out of his seat and across the waiting room.

This nurse at the entranceway was different than the one before, wearing plain navy scrubs with her brown hair pulled back into a high ponytail, and she fixed him with a close-lipped smile at his ungainly approach. He waited for her to say something, but she just shifted to the side and gripped a clipboard closer to her chest, allowing him to step through before silently leading him past the nurses’ station and down a door-lined hall, and then another, and then halfway down that.

They ended up inside a nondescript room with the usual clinical elements: a paper-covered examination table tucked in the corner, two black plastic chairs for potential company, a wall desk beneath a row of cabinets, and one rolling stool. And tacky wallpaper and dusty, tackier window curtains to boot, but that was the snob in Steve talking more than anything else. The rack of pamphlets and magazines on the desk looked germy and wholly uninteresting, and the anatomical graphs on the walls just made him sick, so he didn’t spend any extra time mentally cataloging any of those details.

Shaking off his split-second observations, he turned around to make absentminded conversation, but he’d only opened his mouth when the nurse produced a light mint-green paper gown out of thin air and shoved it directly in his eyeline. He stared at it for a single second before a bemused noise crawled its way out of his throat. “Uh.”

“It’s for you,” she unhurriedly shook it for emphasis, as if that concept wasn’t clear enough. “I can bring you a paper blanket, too, if you’d like that, but everything’s got to come off before the doc gets in here.”

He might’ve had a vague idea that something like this was a possibility, but, good grief, those useless books at home really hadn’t prepared him for shaky situations such as these, had they? He would’ve remembered reading something like, ‘strip down, open up, and prepare to be debased in the name of science’, and such an omission was exceptionally glaring when he was currently staring down the barrel of the gun.

“Seriously?” He blinked down at the shift, trying to look unaffected but failing from wanting nothing more than to keep his clothing, namely his pants, very firmly on. “Gotta be honest here, I wasn’t really expecting a full-body exam today.”

The nurse simultaneously gave a coy smile and a roll of her shoulders. “Sorry. It’s all or nothing here. We’re very thorough.”

 _I’ll say_ , he inwardly groused, finally taking the offending paper gown from her proffered grip and moving away. “Alright.”

Still, despite his compliance, Steve didn’t undress right away; his self-confidence was already on the line here, and he wasn’t going to sacrifice it any further than he had to. He wasn’t above firmly asking for privacy if she decided to make a point of asking when he’d strip past his skivvies.

Fortunately, she didn’t say anything about it. Unfortunately, what followed was a solid leap out of the frying pan and into the fire.

“Y’know, we hardly get any male omegas around here,” she told him as he awkwardly settled onto the table without ripping the thin courtesy paper. She flipped a sheet over the clipboard and peered up at him in the process. “You’re a real special case.”

Stiffly, he clenched his sweaty hands together in his lap, and the paper gown in his grip rustled like cellophane. “I don’t know about that.”

Truly, few things in this cruel world made Steve feel more like a freak than oblivious or uncouth so-called medical professionals going through his life history, finding his less-than-common biological status stamped there in black-and-white, and subsequently treating him like a lab rat chasing cheese through a maze. He was a fool to think that this time, _no_ , that _anything_ involved in this entire experience would be the exception.

Either her careless words caught up with her or she was somehow more perceptible than he’d given her credit for, for she blanched very quickly thereafter. “Oh, no, I hope I didn’t offend you. Just an observation. Sorry. Again.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He gave her a forced but convincing quirk of the lips, and she gratefully returned it before turning around and busying herself with retrieving items from one of the cupboards above the desk—a plastic cup that looked very familiar, a thermometer and a package of corresponding disposable tips, and a blood pressure cuff—all while making idle small talk about the local weather and this Sunday’s upcoming Colts game versus the 49ers. It was so obvious that she was purposefully trying to avoid the now-touchy subject of his being an omega until she had to, but he welcomed her efforts, leaned into it, even. The weather was pretty mundane right now, and he didn’t pay much attention to football (he was more of a professional baseball kind of man, a little basketball and hockey, too), but anything was better than the uncomfortable alternative.

Once she’d assembled her supply kit, she started her tasks by first crowding in to take his blood work; he’d never been overly squeamish about the sight of blood, but needles themselves were another story, and he winced for a split second when she injected it into the crook of his left arm. After that, there was a quick temperature reading and a full chest examination, and then she pushed the stethoscope off her ears and back to her neck so she could give him another smile, one that was now sympathetic instead of obliged. “Hopefully, you can guess what I’m going to ask you to do next.” For good measure, she gesticulated in the direction of the plastic cup sitting ominously on the counter, and his answering nod was glum.

“Better get used to this, huh?” He sighed, slowly sliding off the paper and only managing to rip it a shred in the process. His arm still throbbed in time with his heartbeat from the needle prick, and he shrugged his rolled sleeve over the off-brand tan bandage covering the minuscule wound, where light bruising was already forming around the edges. “I have a feeling it’s going to become one helluva regular occurrence.”

“Welcome to the club,” she tittered, placing the cup in his open hand. Just as he’d thought, it was the same plastic variety that he’d given Billy not altogether that long ago, and it made him oddly nostalgic for the time before everything in his life had irrevocably changed. “Think of it this way—at least it’s only urine.”

There wasn’t time to ponder _that_ lovely thought, because then she was opening the door and moving forward to point him in the direction of a patient-specific, gender-neutral bathroom. In there, it was an equal experience to when he’d taken those home tests—unwieldy and unusual, but only more degrading, because he personally had to hand the half-full cup over to a waiting nurse when he resurfaced. Luckily, she looked as unfazed as ever, and it helped curb some of the not-so-inward cringing that he couldn’t quite stifle.

Steve intended to head straight back to the comfortably boring examination room, because the spotlight-like overhead lights, nearby voices of conversating nurses and a distant baby crying, and intense smell of antiseptic were all aiding in making him feel more nauseated than he already was. The nurse seemed to pick up on his discomfiture, so, even though they had to take a detour across one of the hallways to the stadiometer and scales so she could jot down his height and weight, they were both back in the room before long, and he was once again gratefully isolated from the outside world at large.

As he resettled onto the annoying crinkly paper, he watched as she gathered her materials into an organized pile on the desk: namely, her clipboard, which she preemptively pulled out a piece of yellow transfer paper from; the tightly stopped blood vial and sample cup; and a sealed package of hCG-testing dipsticks, oddly reminiscent of litmus strips for chlorinated water, that’d come from a dedicated shelf inside one of the cupboards. He wouldn’t have been opposed to watching her dip those testers into the cup’s contents if it’d have meant watching them turn from white to presumably neon colors right before his very eyes, and that curiosity led to him feeling some slight disappointment when both the package and cup lid stayed firmly closed.

Double-checking that all needle- and thermometer-related paraphernalia was in the dedicated waste receptacle, she picked up the vial and cup in one hand, slid the clipboard and testers under the junction of her arm and ribcage, and somehow opened the door without jostling any of the fluid cargo in her possession. “Looks like everything’s all set,” she gave him a smile that he took as reassuring. “You get changed, and I’ll go tell Dr. Hewitt that you’re ready to be seen.”

He bowed his head in concession. “Alright, will do, thanks.”

Without another word, the door swung closed behind her as she made her way back to the nurses’ central hub, and then he was left all alone with just his thoughts—again. In one fell swoop, he let out a sigh that he didn’t know he’d been suppressing; and, although he was loath to do so, he grit his teeth and went to work exchanging all of his personal garments for just the offending gown, which, up to that point, had been sitting there on the table like a ghost personally intent on haunting him. Once he’d folded each piece of clothing into a slightly messy yet contained stack and had replaced himself on the table, Steve let his head tip against the wall and his eyelids drift shut. While he remained there, motionless, an urge bubbled up and compelled him to start counting in his head, a rather frivolous attempt to both pass the time and to center himself before the doctor came in. He had only a surface-level idea of what she’d be like from offhandedly researching her credentials, because, well, it didn’t pay to be choosy here in Hawkins. Still, the ambiguity didn’t exactly help his anxiety.

The aforementioned Dr. Hewitt didn’t make him wait long—or, if she did, Steve didn’t know; he’d lost count at about two-hundred-and-thirty-something. As far as he knew, he hadn’t fallen asleep, at most only halfway, but the time passed unnaturally as if he had: one second, he was trying and failing to retain his composure as he waited, and the next, the handle was rattling and the door was clicking open, making his eyes fly open and his back go ramrod straight and his hands clasp onto his bony, too-exposed knees.

“Well, hello there,” a new, older woman greeted, moving with an assured air into the room with a clipboard of her own. In just those three words, he immediately detected a faint Chicagoan accent, something that he was only able to recognize from his innumerable trips there and definitely not from an intrinsic aptitude with regional dialects. She had on a standard white lab coat with a pristine black sweater and matching slacks beneath it, as well as reading glasses on a chain around her neck, and a look on her face that was impassive but not unkind. When he’d looked over her background, the directory had had an accompanying photo, which was highly similar to the woman in front of him, but the years had passed since its capture; if he had to hazard a guess, she was maybe around his mother’s age, but that was where the similarities ended. Whereas Cecilia Harrington, a woman who hadn’t celebrated an accurate birthday since her third fortieth when Steve was in middle school, kept her perfectly coiffed shoulder-length hair dyed a very specific shade of mahogany and never wavered on it, the doctor’s was the exact opposite: choppy and short and utterly salt-and-pepper, save for the shockingly white strand in the front section like an accent piece, an anomaly that suited her quite well. “I’m Doctor Rosheen Hewitt, OB-GYN.”

He wasn’t sure if he should get down and shake her hand like any polite adult probably ought to; if it weren’t for the fact that he was currently as close to being naked as he could be without actually being naked, and that the cumbersome paper beneath his thighs would rip even further if he even moved an inch, he would’ve. Luckily, she made the choice for him by immediately kicking out the rolling stool and plopping upon it, so he stayed in place and tried to ignore the flash of guilt at what was surely an unforgivable faux pas to someone somewhere.

Instead, “Steven Harrington,” was his immediate response. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” she tilted her head like an inquisitive cat and lifted her glasses from her neck to perch them lowly on the bridge of her aquiline nose. “So, word on the street is that you’re pregnant, correct?”

He was sure that he’d never, ever get used to hearing that aloud, much less copping to it. “Er—that’s right. First time and everything, apparently.”

Dr. Hewitt quirked her lips and fished out a ballpoint pen from her jacket’s breast pocket; she used it to loftily scribble something down, paused, and then wrote a full-fledged sentence that Steve hadn’t the faintest idea of what it could possibly entail. “In my line of work, I’ve found that home tests can often be temperamental, but we’ve just re-confirmed your results a few minutes ago, so official congratulations are in order.”

“Thanks,” he said uneasily. With how sick that he’d been, he’d never once imagined a possibility where it’d all been a placebo effect or that he’d somehow gotten _three_ different false positives, and, thankfully, now he didn’t have to. In some nightmarish alternate reality, he imagined having to tell Billy that he’d spoken too soon, that he wasn’t pregnant after all, and he probably just would’ve fled the country for good if it’d come down to that. Actually, if he really thought about it, that wasn’t such a bad idea: he held a current passport and a more-than-sufficient business-class credit card, so he theoretically _could_ raise the kid in the Maldives or anywhere equally Billy-less if push came to shove— _talk about food for thought. Now, onto how to fake my death…_

She looked up from the clipboard in the same way that the nurse had, shrewd and knowledgeable, and balanced the pen between her extended fingers. “Alright, which would you prefer first—examination or questions?”

Steve had always been the type of person for instant gratification, who preferred hearing good news first and bad news last (or never at all), and the same approach extended to doing almost-easy things before totally-embarrassing things. Plus, the longer that he could stay clothed around unfamiliar people _and_ keep his dignity intact, the better. “Questions, please.”

“Okay.” The pen clicked, ready and waiting for his impending answer. “Could you guesstimate for me when the first day of your last heat was?”

“I already did the math,” he confessed, making her peer out at him from behind her drooping glasses and the clipboard in her palm. “August twenty-fourth. Eight weeks this Friday, so it’ll be tentatively sometime around next May, give or take.”

“Well, well,” she hummed, crossing her legs at the knee and making her rolling stool shift on its wheels as she did so. “Excellent. I have to say, I can’t tell you how many first-time patients come in here and can’t remember a date to save their lives.”

Steve felt a flush creep up the back of his neck, even though such a compliment was entirely welcome after quietly enduring these very rough last two weeks. He figured that now was as good a time as any to elaborate why he’d gone the extra mile; if there was anyone else who should know such nitty-gritty details, it was his doctor. “Well, uh, this was planned. So, I have a reason to remember.”

Dr. Hewitt nodded and marked down, presumably, both his supplied gestational age and due date. “I see. Then, I suppose, my next question is why your partner couldn’t make it? I usually like to have both of you here so we can go over your shared genetic histories and what both of you should expect. If they’re busy, that’s understandable, we can always postpone it until a future visit. But the first time’s a big deal.”

 _Whoo-boy._ The elephant in the room was bound to come up eventually, but no amount of forewarning could make facing the truth head-on suck any less.

“I…there’s no partner,” he swallowed, squeezing his own kneecap to try to steady his voice. Surely, there was no need to feel such shame about his non-traditional life choices; maybe he would’ve faced more opposition back in the eighties, but times were modern now: they were five, almost four, years away from not only a new decade _and_ century, but also a new _millennium_. Case in point, he could just hear Robin’s voice in his head as if she’d bought real estate there— _leave it in the twentieth like everyone else, Steven._ And, annoyingly yet lovingly, in the way that only she knew how, _you dingus_. “It’s just me.”

She looked down at the clipboard again, and he knew without a doubt that she was glancing over the paperwork he’d filled out at least a half-hour ago, at the checkbox indicating his marital status. To her credit, she didn’t need to cover herself, because her face gave nothing away—not judgment, not shame, not surprise. The lack of change was refreshing. “Ah. No matter, that’s perfectly fine, too. Could you answer some of their answers if needed?”

 _No?_ “Um. Not much. I…can always ask him, if I have to?”

As soon as he said it, he knew that that wasn’t going to happen, not in the near future or in a million years. _What, am I supposed to call him up tonight with a whole-ass list of medical conditions we need to cover? ‘So, real talk, do you have a history of heart disease or high-blood pressure in your family? Oh, wow, me too. Lucky kid, already.’_

Fortunately, Dr. Hewitt rewarded him with a passive shrug. “It’s your choice. Your own information is by far the most important, but anything extra can only help, not hurt. I’m sorry that I have to ask, but it’s not personal—just a formality.”

“I understand,” and he did. Inversely, she would at some point, too, because he’d come here with the steadfast idea of keeping _all_ information about the other father off the books for a multitude of reasons, which meant those incomplete records were going to stay that way. But Steve certainly couldn’t be the first of her patients to have a baby on his own, nor would he be the last, so he didn’t see it being a point of contention within a visit or two.

By the time they got through a comprehensive summary of his and his extended family’s medical backgrounds, he was slowly but surely starting to warm up to their back-and-forth. Dr. Hewitt had a special knack of making him feel as if he were in total control of the situation, all while getting the answers that she was looking for without pushing or overwhelming him. And Steve, dare he say, actually felt comfortable in her presence.

That is, until she threw a sudden curveball that shook him to his core, and Steve went from being at ease to squirming in his seat on the table.

“Have you considered your birthing plans yet?”

She said it so off-the-cuff, so out-of-the-blue that he couldn’t help but gape at her for a solid ten seconds. “No—no, not really. Should I? Isn’t that a long way off?”

“Trust me, it comes sooner than you think,” she raised her eyes to the ceiling in a show of disbelief. “Believe me, I have three of my own. While every pregnancy’s uniquely different, it’s a weird time across the board—each minute feels like a month, and each month feels like a minute. Mark my words.” She set the clipboard against her stomach and clasped her folded hands over her lower thigh. “You have three-fourths of a year to ponder your options, but what’s your gut reaction right at this moment? No pun intended, of course.”

Steve’s eyes had gone bone-dry, blinking repeatedly to no avail. His gut wasn’t very accurate these days, too concerned with violently rejecting any sustenance that he tried to deposit into it specifically _because_ of what was already there, which was a contradiction to the highest degree. _I’m trying to help you grow here_ , he routinely thought, vexed, at least once a day. _Can you give me—us—a break?_

“What do most people like me go for?” He refrained from clarifying what he meant by ‘like me’; in this case, it was redundant, because Dr. Hewitt was undoubtedly already on the same page.

“Eight or nine times out of ten, cesarean,” she replied, thankfully following in line. “Natural is possible, but, I will say, it’s quite a bit more strenuous on male-assigned omegas compared to female-assigned omegas or betas. On the other hand, surgery _is_ surgery. Neither decision should be taken lightly. It’s up to you.”

Steve didn’t know what it said about him that he didn’t immediately eighty-six ‘natural’, as she’d called it, right then and there. It wasn’t that he _wanted_ to go through something needlessly traumatic or that he wanted some idiotic, futile bragging rights— _my childbirth was epidural-free and therefore ‘realer’ than yours, Martha_ —but deciding whether he wanted to get cut or split open was like…deciding whether he wanted to get _cut_ or _split_ open. As with every momentous choice that he’d make over the next few months, years, decades, _the rest of his life as a parent_ , he’d ponder it endlessly and make himself sick wondering if he’d made the right decision or not. So, the next best thing was just to postpone it as long as possible, knowing himself, probably until he got pushed into a split-second decision.

“Can I get back to you on that?” He asked, chewing a patch on the inside corner of his mouth until it was good and raw. For the first and only time since this whole affair had begun, he was glad just how long it would take to get to the point before he actually had to choose between the two. “I need to do more research, ask some friends, weigh my options.”

“Of course,” she said reassuringly, without a moment’s hesitation. “Keep it in mind for the next few weeks, and we’ll discuss it again next month. Or the month after that. No problem.”

Sill chewing, he rubbed at the junction of his neck and shoulder blade, where the muscles were unrelentingly sore from how poorly he’d slept last night. “Okay. Thanks.”

Returning to the clipboard, she unclipped it and shuffled another paper on top. “Then let’s move onto other things, like your career and lifestyle. What do you do for work, and do you travel often?”

 _Uh-oh._ Grimacing, Steve told her that he did, very much so. As expected, she was less than thrilled with his answer, and she gave a _humph_ to prove it.

“That’s going to be tricky. Now, flying on its own isn’t unsafe or undoable, per se, so you could theoretically keep going well into your third trimester if you play your cards right.” Then Dr. Hewitt’s brow pinched, and Steve heard the ‘however’ in her tone before she actually said it. “ _However_ , frequent traveling is already strenuous enough on the brain and body, never mind when you’re pregnant. It’s going to be even harder when you’re considerably further along, and, for those first few post-natal months, that type of hectic schedule’s not going to be very practical for you or, potentially, your employer.”

“I know,” he murmured, not meaning for his voice to go so quiet. She surely didn’t mean to sound reproachful, but he couldn’t help but feel cowed anyways. “I understand that I can’t continue at the same high pace forever, and that there’s going to be a lot of changes from here on out. It’s a family business, at least, so restructuring my work won’t be that big of a problem. As for afterwards…I guess I’ll have to wait and see.”

Her face softened, in no doubt influenced by his increasingly rueful tone. “You’ve got time, I know you’ll figure it out. There’s no reason to stop flying for several months, so, in the meanwhile, don’t push yourself further than you can handle. When in doubt, just listen to your body, which is the same advice I give for all situations, by the way.”

He had some reservations how that would ultimately go down, but it was a headache for much later, not now. He showed his compliance by bobbing his head twice.

Dr. Hewitt scribbled something else onto the paper. “We briefly touched upon this with your medical history, but any current medication?”

“I eased off a low dosage of Zoloft about two years ago, and I haven’t taken anything since then. Well, nothing else besides a multivitamin with folic acid, but that’s recent.”

Now, it was her turn to nod. “Good. Keep it up. Are they high in iron?”

“…Not that I’m aware.”

“Too much can worsen nausea, so just keep that in mind. Bring them in next time, and I’ll look them over.” For the briefest of seconds, he imagined a possibility where those goddamned gummies were the unlikely culprit for his recent misery (that is, on the days that he could keep them down), and he’d never wanted to destroy an inanimate object more. “So…do you have any questions for me? Most people want to know when they can announce it to friends and family, how to limit miscarriage risks, when they’ll start showing—”

Finally, the moment he’d been waiting for.

“When exactly will I stop puking?” He interrupted, overly eager and refusing to conceal it. “And I already know you’re just going to say ‘wait it out’, but, I swear to god, I can’t keep _anything_ down. I’m trying, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Dr. Hewitt gave a sympathetic chortle. “Good question, and one that I always wish I could definitively answer. Your vitals are too healthy for you to have hyperemesis gravidarum, so, in your case, it’s just—and pardon my language here—a shitty time that should dissipate over the course of the next few weeks. Again, check that your prenatals don’t have too much iron, otherwise, try adding a combination of pyridoxine and doxylamine, AKA vitamin B-6 and Unisom, or some antacids into the mix. Keep a pack of unsalted crackers on hand, and try to eat them as slow as possible. And I mean _slow_ —no more than a few bites every five-to-ten minutes. Ice chips should keep you hydrated, and go for something with electrolytes over plain water whenever you feel like you can hold it down. Don’t mix them together—solids _or_ liquids, not both. If you can’t handle either at night, try again in the morning, and vice versa.”

He hung onto her every word like a life raft in the ocean, and a small seed of hope bloomed in his chest, a feeling that’d been nonexistent for quite some time.

“Whatever you do, don’t feel guilty or worried about skipping meals if you just can’t handle them, because baby will be fine until things eventually plateau. As for when that’ll happen, at the end of the day, unfortunately, time really is the world’s best remedy. I know that doesn’t make you feel any better, but you’re eight weeks now, so, based on my estimates, you should count on feeling better by…earliest, Halloween, and Thanksgiving at the very latest.”

Steve slapped a hand to his forehead and pressed his thumb into his temple. His luck, it would take until Christmas, or perhaps he’d be that poor unfortunate soul who had morning sickness over the course of the whole pregnancy. He tried not to think of such a possibility, lest he should tempt fate and make it so. “Great,” he muttered darkly. He couldn’t say he was surprised that her answer was virtually the same thing those bare-bones books had told him— _wait it out._ In retrospect, he didn’t know what he’d expected; some sort of magical pill to negate the worst of it, maybe, but any sort of trajectory with quickly prescribed medication wasn’t far off from him becoming so dangerously sick that he’d require hospitalization. He was miserable and frustrated, but at least it wasn’t _that_ bad.

And, once again, this was all a problem that he’d set out to create, so he couldn’t complain, or at least not as much as he wanted to. Human nature, and all that; there really was no shaking it.

As if she could read his mind—from the scouring looks she gave over her glasses, the jury was still out on that front—she continued, “I can always prescribe something to help, but I’d like to avoid that unless it’s strictly necessary. If you ever feel sick beyond being able to do anything at all, call me up right away, because the last thing we want is you getting dehydrated.” With another tight nod, she closed the chapter on that subject. “Anything else?”

There was only one thing left, and, as innocuous as it sounded, the notion shot ice down his neck, down his spine, until it pooled at the base of his tailbone. “Uh…just…will there be an ultrasound?”

She shook her head and half-waved him off. “We could, but there wouldn’t be much point, either for you or me, this early on. At best, I’d be able to re-verify the age of the fetus, but I’d rather wait for next month and do everything, measurements and gender and heartbeat, all at once. Are those all of your questions?”

He was too preoccupied with ‘gender’ and ‘heartbeat’ to think of anything else for, oh, _ever_. “I’m pretty sure we’d be here all day if I had my way, so I’m just going to say yes.”

“You wouldn’t be the first, nor the last,” she smiled, setting her clipboard atop the desk and clicking her pen a final time. The sound reverberated off the polished tiled floor for a mere second. “Well, then, that also sums up my answers. For now, at least, unless you think of something else. Which just leaves us with the preliminary exam.”

Steve tensed, but, really, there was no outcome where he couldn’t comply. If he wanted to be healthy—and he did—then he would have to jump through some annoying, embarrassing, _difficult_ hoops to get there; although, if there was one consolation, one day, he was totally going to hold everything he went through over his kid’s head.

That thought caused his lips to twitch into a very small but very real smile, kinda like the thing inside him. _Very small, very real._

In the end, it wasn’t that bad—alright, it was neither comfortable nor relaxing, and it definitely wasn’t enjoyable, but he’d been through worse. Steve focused on breathing deeply and counting the holes in the ceiling tiles instead of how she poked and prodded at every inch square of his body and peppered him with a dozen or so more questions in the process; at some point, they were even trading scar stories, and that helped his nerves immensely. He got a sparkling clean bill of health from the whole ordeal, too, which wasn’t a concern of his before, but now it doubly wasn’t. So, there was that.

By the time that he got out of the doctor’s office entirely, hours after he’d initially showed up, he was sure of two things: one, he made the best decision in choosing Dr. Hewitt out of any other obstetrician in Indiana, and, two, he was fucking _raiding_ the nearest Wal-Mart for everything that she’d even remotely recommended.

And that wasn’t an exaggeration: Hawkins had chain stores and small mom-and-pops, but their closest big-box retailer was in Marion, so Steve drove around twenty-five minutes out of his way just to buy a frat party’s worth of Gatorade and Powerade and plain crackers, as well as a swath of antacids and literally all the bottles of Vitamin B-6 and Unisom on their respective shelves.

The word ‘overzealous’ didn’t even register on his radar.

When he got home with his emergency rations—which was an apt description, because the look on the cashier’s face had asked, ‘Wait, is there some upcoming nuclear disaster that I don’t know about?’—it took every ounce of willpower not to cross the hall into the living room and collapse onto the couch, groceries and dirty clothes and laced shoes be damned. He just glared at it as he went on to the kitchen, where he dutifully unloaded his shopping spree until every inch of the island was loaded with drinks, sleeves of crackers, and pill bottles galore. And while it was aggravating, truthfully, he did feel considerably better once that mammoth task was complete and once he’d splashed water on his face and had changed into clean, soft loungewear.

Naturally, after an entire morning and early afternoon spent running around on a night of fruitless sleep and no food, he was sapped and starved. With Dr. Hewitt’s pointers ringing around in his head, he finished tying on a pair of worn-out sweatpants and intended on fulfilling the lattermost impulse with a handful of crackers, but, first, something compelled him to take a breather and sit on his bed. All at once, all lingering energy drained out of him like a runny yolk from a cracked egg. The crackers would have to wait—he slumped over and was out before his head hit the mattress.

The next thing that he knew, he was jolting awake, horizontal and stiff. Coming from a dormant state, he wasn’t very hungry or nauseated, for once, but he _was_ dying of thirst, and his first act was to ponder which flavor of sports drink he’d go attempt to imbibe once he’d built up the momentum to get up.

With the side of his face still pressed into the duvet, he peered out from heavy lids at the light leaking through the shuttered window blinds, then at his alarm clock, which told him that he’d slept the afternoon away and that it was close to dinnertime. Another light caught his eye, and it was his answering machine beaming a red monospaced ‘1’ back at him—had that been blinking when he’d gotten home, or had he actually managed to sleep through a phone call?—and he lifted a leaden arm to press the playback button. A staticky pause commenced the message, and who else could it be but Billy; his annoyed voice burst forth from the speaker and flooded the room, his annoyance ever-present and, as usual, barely constrained. If Steve was borderline drowsy before, he felt suddenly and acutely very awake.

“Harrington, it’s Hargrove,” Billy intoned casually, as if they were dueling almost-archenemies playing basketball in high school again, as if it were normal for two grown men to keep referring to each other by their last names long after that period in their lives had ended. “Christ, this is stupid, but if you’re not out god-knows-where pawning off overpriced finger paintings to rich assholes overcompensating for their small dicks, call me up. There’s nothing to do in this fuckin’ town, and it feels like forever since we’ve hung out like normal fuckin’ people. Or don’t. Whatever.” There was a wet raspberry before the call ended, and the voicemail climaxed with a loud _BEEP_ to cap off just whatever the hell that was, some impromptu poetry slam from some resident weird asshole that didn’t act quite as asshole-ish as he once had.

_Talk about one for the books. Jesus._

Steve remained prostrate for another full moment as he let the message sink in fully, grinning lopsidedly like an idiot and hand still paused over the edge of the bed, inches away from the nightstand. It was true, they hadn’t seen each other since—god, was it _that_ night? It had to be. Shit, that had been just under two weeks ago, but it felt like a lifetime-and-a-half had passed. He hadn’t intentionally meant to avoid Billy, but, even so, at least he had a few good excuses; his schedule always became steadily busier as the holiday season crept closer and closer, what with fine art being a popular luxury purchase, and, now, things were compounded further with his own teeter-tottering health that’d been preoccupying his every waking second. Lately, there hadn’t been enough hours in the day to squeeze in socializing with any of his friends or…well, whatever Billy was to him.

Dialing Billy back was as easy as pressing the call button and retrieving the receiver, and as hard as pulling himself up into a loose sitting position, his legs curled up beneath him and free hand pressed into the bed like an anchor.

“Hey,” he said when the line picked up. He was still smiling and, no matter how much he bit at the ever-raw patch on the inside of his mouth, the one from earlier, couldn’t contain it if he wanted to. “Nice message.” Then, struck by a sudden thought, he switched tactics and uttered in a husky, slightly slurred draw reminiscent of Billy’s own, “ _Or don’t. Whatever._ ”

To his delight, Billy’s sarcastic chuckle followed. “Asshole.”

“ _Asshole._ ”

“Harrington.”

Steve snickered. “Sorry,” but he really wasn’t. “I’m just jealous of your prowess, oh-great-and-powerful wordsmith. Anyways, to answer your question, I’m free tomorrow after work. What’d ya have in mind?”

Billy’s soft grunt was almost friendly. “Nah, I was thinking Friday or some shit like that. But, if you’re interested, Max’s coaching a peewee soccer practice after school tomorrow, and I was going to go just to watch her get as red in the face as her hair. Feel free to tag along.”

He should’ve let it slide, but something about Billy’s logic just didn’t compute. “Wait, what? Because Max burns easily or something?”

“No.” Billy paused, thinking. “Well, yeah, but what I meant was the kids drive her absolutely fucking crazy. It’s hysterical. You should’ve seen her face when one of the shit-stains actually got caught in the net, like, ‘oh-fuck-we-have-to-use-scissors’-caught. God, I wish I had that on tape.”

Leering and jeering in the stands at a very stone-faced Max as she wrangled a throng of dim-witted kids—was there anything more quintessentially Billy? Apart from him blaring Iron Maiden from his Camaro as he flew down the Pacific Coast Highway or, fuck, unbuttoned shirts and skin-tight jeans and occasionally no underwear, Steve thought not.

“Alright,” he conceded. That meant he would have to find a way in the next twenty-four hours to prevent himself from vomiting around or on Billy (or both), but he was up for the challenge. One of the over-the-counter drugs—ironically, currently sitting out on the counter—had to be his knight-in-shining armor, he just knew it. “Sounds like a plan. I’m sure she’ll appreciate the support.”

“Trust me,” Billy straight up cackled, and Steve got a passing image of that evil old guy in the cloak, the one with the fucked-up face, sitting on that big throne on the Death Star. Billy already had the laugh down; give him about fifty years, and it’d be apt casting. “She won’t.”

Despite that, he still heard Billy’s own particular brand of fondness for her behind his words. For some reason—and just for that moment alone, because Steve would have to get up and be sick _again_ almost immediately after they hung up—that made him feel just the tiniest bit better. Here he was, perpetually minutes away from puking his brains out and feeling crummier than he’d ever had in his entire life, but, if Billy could graduate from totally antagonizing Max to publicly supporting her in his own twisted way, then Steve could make it through this.

Probably.

It was going to be a very long, very weird thirty-odd more weeks, of that he had no doubt.


End file.
